


Atomic Salvage

by warschach



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Gore, M/M, Post-Zombie Apocalypse, Violence, minor Lance/Rolo, sharp shooter! Lance, zombie cage fighting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-14 14:04:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11784696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warschach/pseuds/warschach
Summary: See you would think with the world running deep with zombies and shit, Lance's biggest problem would be earning a bite free bill every night.Fat chance of that.Turns out, everyone wants a bite out of him though. You name it- the military, the zombies, the cartel, the guys, the girls.He might not mind one guy hounding him, Keith, with his gasoline mouth and smoke-dark body.





	1. Count me down

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been in the works since December and I'm so excited and anxious to get this out. It's kinda my baby at this point.
> 
> I took a lot of inspiration from several films, books, games but the biggest influence came from The Last of Us and Fallout. I wanted to write a zombie fic for the longest and to take Lance down a darker road. Plus I'm a whore for ultra, mega badass Lance.
> 
> A warning the first couple of chapters are Lance-centric, big surprise right? I accidentally made a character study b/c i love writing this dark, mature version of Lance.

“Shiro,” Keith said as he watched the lights from certain sections of the city die down after curfew and bathed their room in shadows. The moon highlighted parts of Shiro’s back marred from the fights, from his tour in the ongoing Z-War, and from the years of learning to survive in a world that didn’t grant such mercies. He looked like iron under the skin, hard and resilient, as the simple mechanics of his body tensed taut over corded muscles.

Shiro stripped his shirt and tossed it. He laughed, a soft rumbly thing, to himself as he sat at the foot of the bed and started on the laces of his boots. “Oh, no.”

“Don’t play,” Keith complained.

Shiro tugged one boot off and chucked it against the wall. “I think it’s funny that you get so worked up every time I’m about to fight.”

“Now you're a dick.”

“I remember the first time I said hi to you. Think you said to eat shit if my memory serves me right.” He looked back. “Now… well, I can’t cross the street without you checking both sides with an AK.”

“First, I said to get lost—“

“No. I told you we should team up, and you said eat shit. You changed your mind after you saw my rugged good looks.”

“What looks, you had that really gross cave man beard.”

“Gross? Excuse me, but a gallery of ladies would kindly disagree.”

“Allura said it was gross.”

“You lie.”

“Nah. She told me how thrilled she was when you shaved it.”

“Now I think you’re deliberately trying to hurt my feelings.”

Keith’s fond smile sank. “Shiro.”

“Buddy. Keith. Look at me. I’m gonna get this done. I’m gonna win. Half the pay will go to Allura and the rest we take and buy a nice house in Tenny. Farm live. Horses. A ranch. Pigs. We’ll be gross old world cowboys. I’ll have kids, and you can babysit those kids.”

“Yea but… this isn’t like the last times. This guy is a big deal. He’s been one for a while. None’s ever—“

Shiro interrupted, face charming and serious, and that was an issue Keith had with it—his calm attitude. “Then it’s about time someone changes that, right?”

“The world doesn’t work like that,” Keith moped. The world screwed you and took and took until you forgot you had anything.

Shiro’s big hand swooped up his neck and into the long ends of his hair and rubbed fatherly like he could erase the fear festering up in Keith’s brain. “Stop. Don’t bring that talk here. It’s bad luck.”

An easy smile bent his lips. Shiro had that type of effect and made the world easy. Made everything easy for Keith. “You say that about everything.”

“I do not,” Shiro denied with a voice of mock offense.

“Really, the whole _not having sex before a fight_ one?” He pressed, grinning at the big man’s face as he searched for a reasonable defense.

“It’s bad luck.”

“And the ones about tossing back cold ones,” he laughed.

“C’mon, you can’t fault me for that one. It’s a fact. You drink and feast before battle.”

“… Promise me if it gets bad you’ll toss the match,” said Keith, smile faltering when reality hit him again with a whammy.

Yea, we didn’t get every day here.

Hadn’t an every day since the start; just only the day and little else.

Shiro frowned. “Keith—“

“I don’t need a house in Tenny. I don’t need this room. I can go off fine without all of this but you… C’mon. Don’t make me say it out loud, Shiro. You’re like a brother to me...I don’t know what I would do if you went out like everyone else.”

Shiro dropped his hand, looking at Keith with no false strength or showmanship of nobility. “If I forfeit, Keith, we don’t get out of this. The debt will grow. We’ll fight for years before we can make a dent in it and if we’re lucky, we might get this chance to win big.”

“I know.”

He nodded. “Alright. Things get hairy, I’ll throw the fight.”

The tension oozed out of him at the promise. “Thank you.”

“And if I do that, then you’re the one who’s going to explain to Allura why I did that.”

“Deal.”

Shiro’s mouth hooked dashingly hot and sweet and strong and jumped on the mattress with the intensity and mirth of a kid with a bottle of beer. “Now how about a toast.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “God.”

“I go by Shiro but you can call me your God if you like.”

“You’re stupid.”

“You have such a way with words, Keith,” he teased, twisting off the cap. “I might’ve dated you if you were a girl.”

“And I might’ve punched you.”

“Oh mercy me.”

“I’m seriously considering bunking with Hunk,” he threatened.

“But my bed will be so cold and big without your angry face,” Shiro teased and barked out a full-fledged laugh when Keith scowled. “Oh no. I know that look I’m in for it tonight. What will I do?”

“You’ll pass that beer over here if you know what’s good for you.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

 

 

[x]

 

 

Lance loitered behind the canvas tent with his one of his legs tucked on the crate as the other pressed into the soft mud. Men in green military fatigues moved around the camp in route to cleanse a possible settlement or to report in to a superior officer.

Lance unclipped the sheath buckled on his thigh and dragged the Bowie knife from its holster, the sharp curve of it hissing across the leather. He used the point to clean under his nails, flicking away dirt and blood.

He heard Coran’s voice as he talked with the commanding officer of this outpost. “Huston? You’re shitting me, Diana.”

Diana was a woman too elegant in the face and body to be a balls-busting officer overseeing an entire outpost in the Z-War; her eyes were round and dove like, her mouth pouty, her stature short compared to most of the men yet she had a dazzling success rate, tight soldiers, and wise tactics.

Diana ignored Coran’s insubordination.  “I sent two units down there to clear the infected. I haven’t heard a report in weeks. I need you to go down there and check on my troops.”

“They’re dead. There. Checked.”

“I’m not asking you to clear the section.”

Coran laughed through his nose, flippant. “Good cause that’s shit ain’t getting clear.”

Diana made a noise of irritation.

“Sorry, General,” Coran corrected, sensing her ire.

“I need to know if our troops are dead or alive. I need to eyes in Huston.”

“Huston’s a lost cause, Diana,” said Coran, voice sensitive for her pride and mission. War hungry as Diana was, her foot was in the mud like everyone else. She had a tent, a bed, a fence with twenty sentries guarding her well-being. Troops had their eyes and the soldier beside them as their guard dog. “We’re not the first to try.”

“True but we can be the first to win it back. Everyone said we couldn’t get back Old York, and we did.”

Coran scrubbed his head, his fingernails were bitten to the skin and caked with mud and dried blood. “That took fifteen years.”

“We won back New Cali. Little Rock. Chi-Town.  Do I have to go on?”

“We’re not all war thirsty,” he argued. Sick of her oversight, of all the higher ups willing blindness to the people on the ground. To the sacrifice they made each day and night.

Who cared, right?

Won the city.

Established a ghost of the old world.

Tall walls protected the people, sectioned off the animals

“This isn’t thirst. It’s us bringing back the old world from the infected. It’s making our country whole and proud.”

“I don’t want my soldiers in dat hornet’s nest.”

“That’s not what I’m asking of you,” said Diana. “Check and report.”

“Checkin’ means walkin’ in dat place.”

“So a simple recon is too much of you and your unit?”

“No,” Coran huffed. He was no fool, and he knew bait when he saw it. “My unit is a bunch of boys and girls I raised into men and women who want to finish their tour and go home.”

“I’m your commanding officer.”

He nodded. “Dat you are.”

“I could have you imprison for outright refusing an order.”

“Well you made it seem like an aggressive suggestion.”

Diana sighed. “I don’t have faith in anyone else to get this done fast and painless. Half of my troops are in Flor.  The others are at D of C. My top guys went to Huston. The ones here are in training. They’re all settlers and slummers. Never seen an infected in person. Never held a gun. I can’t send them. I don’t have time to spare to ask the higher ups for more men, which they’ll out right refuse because those half of the higher ups are comfy being stationed in the cities. They don’t want to fight now that they know a home.”

She continued, voice gentle and not of a superior officer but one friend to another. “So I ask, as your friend, go to Huston. Find my soldiers or their bodies. Give me Intel on how deep the infection is there. And I’ll see about getting their applications for citizenships top priority when the time comes.”

“Friend? Completely ignoring our night of—“

She tried a stern look at the man but fondness and an unresolved passion made cracks in it. “Coran.”

He showed his palms, smiling with that roguish curl. “Kiddin’, cher. I’ll go. We’ll sweep the area but if I see a horde, I’m pullin’ out.”

 

 

[x]

 

 

Lance crept on Coran as he walked out the tent, his steps masked to be silent and unobserved.

“So Huston, huh?” He asked.

Coran jumped, cursing loud enough to startle the other troops working around the camp. “Sonofabitch. You’ve been listenin’ in again, boy.”

“I was sitting outside,” Lance said, voice and face that of a degenerate with no stock of shame. “Diana’s tent happened to be right next to me. And I just happened to hear your whole conversation.”

“You little shit,” he sniped, shaking his head at Lance’s insolence.

Lance brought his hand to his heart. “I feel so loved.”

Coran grabbed his elbow, stopping Lance’s strut, and whispered to him low. “Listen; keep this close to the chest alright? I don’t want them getting spooked about heading over.”

He shrugged lazily.  Maybe he had no faith or trust in the clean collars of the higher up within the military but Coran he trusted to hell and back. If the guy asked for Lance to stick an iron in a man, he would. “Sure. But can I ask something though?”

“Go ahead.” Coran clapped his back and started walking again.

He traced Coran’s profile for a message underneath it, then asked. “Should I be worried?”

He turned his head and bestowed on him a funky expression. “Da hell. The moment dat happens then we’re all fucked.”

“Right, right,” said Lance. “I see your boots shakin’, Captain.”

“It’s what my leg does around old lovers.”

“I’ll protect you, Cap,” he joked. “Keep you in my scope. Not a fly will get near you.”

“Ugh. Don’t do that. You’ll blow my head off before any zambo can eat my ass.”

“It’s gonna be a ride.”

“Dat it will, my boy. Dat it will.”

 

Lance and Coran met up with the rest of the platoon as they chatted and shot the shit over grub in one of the dining tents on the outpost. The platoon commanded a whole table to themselves from the rest of the soldiers on the outpost. Lots of the troops here protected the outpost from zombies and raiders stupid enough to steal from the military.

They hooted and waved them over and offered them a flask of moonshine.

Lance shot back a sip, wincing at the horrid taste, and passed it back to Cortez, who had a body of a tank but the soul of a pup.

Ester asked. Chick hit the height class of pre teens, but her small stature and sweet face didn’t stop her from knocking guys’ teeth out when they got handsy or funny about her, Lance knew because he was one of those guys teasing her for fun. Her right hook though, not as much fun personally. “So what’s the plan, Cap?”

“Saddle up, boys and girls, we’re goin’ to Huston.”

“Weren’t dey sending us up North?” questioned Omar, out of everyone on the platoon Omar was the youngest and most inexperienced, barely sixteen and he could pop a can two hundred yards out with a powerful scope.

“What’s in Huston?”

Lance smiled. “Cowboys.”

“There are no cowboys in Huston,“ Charlie barked. The red sun glared off his glasses.

“I’m heading out West where the hills are gold, and the women have big breasts," Lance sang.

“Ugh. There better be something for me to shoot or I’m putting Lance down.”

“You told me you loved my voice.”

“Not right now I don’t.”

 

 

[x]

 

 

 

The thick walls muffled the world outside their lockerroom where Shiro stretched and warmed his body, rolling his wrist and mock fighting the air with controlled fists.

The crowd’s chatter and their feet shuffling as they moved in the stands moved through the halls like a ghost.  The music on the speakers rumbled vibrations through the cement. The lights above didn’t flicker; the electricity here in New Cali was reliable and strong unlike the rest of the world where you relied on the generosity of generators and windmills. This place was one of the few cities that you could step into and forget about the zombies on the outside.

Keith grabbed two rolls of bandages and wrapped up Shiro’s hands with a focused precision. When he finished up one hand, Shiro would test the flexibility of the binding.

He smiled and gave his other hand to Keith. The skin on his hand was callous and scarred. Shiro’s career as a fighter didn’t help them heal well either, so the scars lasted and marred his fingers “How you feeling?”

“Like I wanna win a million. Slept like a baby.”

Keith pinched him and earned a laugh out of Shiro. “I tried sleeping, but my douche-bag bunkmate snored the whole night.”

“Oh,” Shiro hummed. “This douchebag, would you say he is funny and handsome and strong?”

“Sure. His dick is microscopic though. I feel bad for the lady he ends up with.”

Shiro blushed, embarrassed. “I—I! Keith. I am of adequate size.”

“Adequate size?” Keith smirked as he turned Shiro’s hand over. “You use big words when you’re trying to look cool.”

“I have heard no complaints.”

“They look at your face that’s why.”

“So mean.”

The metal door screeched. The rest of team Volt walked in—Hunk, Pidge, and Allura. Hunk worked the car and guns, and Pidge was their unsanctioned doctor since her training was in a lab with opening up dead people and not exactly saving them. Allura provided the funds and the means to travel across the country.

Shiro got up from the bench and clapped Hunk’s hand. Guy outweighed Shiro in height and muscle and could probably take Shiro in a real fight if he wanted but the guy had no mean bone in his body. A rarity in this age.

 “Wanted to wish you luck, man. Bring it home tonight,” he said, voice warm as his amber eyes.

“No pressure, right?”

Pidge said, “I mean, you’re just fighting a reigning champion for the past six years. So pressure, Shiro. Lots of pressure.” Shortest of the bunch. Pixie face with round eyes and a soft nose.  Small of body and strength but not in mind though because the girl had a brain bigger than the moon.

“Don’t make him nervous,” Allura chided. Leggy, blonde, skin darker than a mouth of a yawning cave and way more money and influence in her pocket than all four of them combined. Biggest baller in the room, holding all the money and their lives in a manner of speaking.  Most of them owed her money for citizenship passes, Shiro and Hunk, while Keith and Pidge were on for the ride.  “You’ll do great. You got us this far. I don’t doubt you’ll win big.”

Win big meant dethroning Lotor from his long-holding title as champion of Z Killing or Hunger Games as the elites originally dubbed it because, here was the kicker, zombies hungered for blood and fighters hungered for fame, money, or a job; so everyone who went in the metal dome had a taste for something in their mouth. Common people called it Z Killing, simple and concise. No flair of dramatics. Rich people could afford drama, but the rest of humanity was constantly knee-deep in drama.

“Now I’m actually nervous. Thanks, guys.”

“Me and Hunk are gonna head up,” Pidge said, patting Shiro once more for luck. “We’ll save a spot for you guys in the stands.”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

“Getting any chatter on the radio?” Coran asked Cortez as he manned the radio in the truck.

Cortez listened closely for any cackle of static for any signs of the unit responding back to their call. He twisted the dials. “Not getting shit, Cap.”

Lance walked down the road with his rifle in his hands where Huston waited in the distance, sunlight refracted off the broken windows and old metal. Unease cut under his skin and moved like an infection.

Lots of rumors about Huston. Lot troops dying in Huston. The higher commands talked about it openly with each other but kept it tight and private among grunts. But Lance was never one to let some five-star asshole with his ass in a chair 24/7 and not on the ground tell him what he should or should not know.

People said the zombies here were smart, thinking like people. Setting up groups.

Some people said the zombies here had an advanced strain of the disease unseen in most parts of the world, one that deformed their bodies twice their size.

“Keep tryin’,” Coran ordered. He acted well, never pitching his voice high or low when he felt stressed or frustrated, but he twirled his mustache, dreading the fact he would have to move the platoon blind. “Maybe they’re on another frequency.”

“Yes, sir.” Cortez went back to it, listening to his headphones.

Ester said from where she perched on the hood of the Hummer, “Sir, we should just move in. Their communications could be down for all we know. Time is wasted standing around.”

“We follow Coran’s orders. No debate,” Lance said before Coran could respond himself.

Call him whatever you preferred; a kiss-ass, brownnoser, he had faith in Coran’s call.

The smart thing was to try to see if anyone was alive before setting foot in the city. It was a long shot but worth the try.

“Look I’m just saying.” Ester opened her palms, talking to Lance now.  “The unit could be in a bind. We could help them out.”

Lance turned, shouldering his rifle lazily so the muzzle stared at the sky. “The right move is to get them on the horn before moving into the city. They had fifty men between each unit. It’s only thirteen of us. We don’t clear cities, just sectors.”

Ester fumed, dropping her chin in her hand, and muttered resentfully. “You sound like you had your nose up Coran’s ass too long.”

Coran chimed in, “Enough now. My heart’s still ticking so until it stops, y’all follow my command.”

Ester scoffed and checked the mag for something to do.

Lance watched Huston.

Despite the mouth off, they all got along but missions had the nasty habit of twisting out their nasty behaviors. Nineteen, they’re still growing in their bodies and their minds, but by old world standards, they were considered kids. Too dumb. Too reckless.

Coran kicked a pebble over the highway and heard it rattle to the ground. “Eyes sharp, Lance.”

“Shit. They’re always sharp.”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

 

_Boom_

_Boom_

_Boom_

Keith looked up at the ceiling where the naked light bulb swung side to side from the audience stomping out Shiro’s name. For Lotor’s. For blood.

Shiro walked forward with Allura beside him, back painted in the old yellow light. Muscles flexing for the fight. Hands balling into fists.

 

_Boom_

_Boom_

_Boom_

 

Two guards opened the large, metal doors for Shiro. The noise muted by the metal now roared through the part. People rose to their feet. The announcer cheered and hyped up the crowd into a chant, multiple voices called for Shiro.

“SHIRO! SHIRO! SHIRO!”

The zombies, tethered by chains, snapped their jaws at the smell of fresh meat. They’re larger than most, experimented on by the government to be wiser and stronger.

The speakers bellowed, “Are you ready? For the fight of the year. The champion against Voltron’s legendary black paladin.”

Shiro glanced back. “I’ll see you on the other side, Keith.”

Metal wailed as the doors slowly closed on Shiro’s back, cutting Keith off and shading the hall back into darkness.

 

_Boom_

_Boom_

_Boom_

It wasn’t the crowd that time but Keith’s heart kicking and screaming at him to pry the doors back even if his fingers bled. Even if his fingers broke.

Open that god damn door.

Shiro wasn’t going to win, he thought with an awful, awful sickness. A grotesque, black ball of certainty. Not one of dread or fear but of certainty.

 

_Boom_

_Boom_

_Boom_

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

 

“Mind the chatter, boys and girls. We’re in the zambos home now,” Coran said, feeding his voice to all his troops’ earpieces.

Lance tapped the device and said, “Got it.”

He went back to scoping the area from where he manned the turret on the back of the third Hummer.

The Hummers drove down the streets of Huston and rocked the passengers back and forth as it climbed over rubble, glass, and debris. Foliage poked between the cracks of asphalt and cement, wild and thriving. Stores and cars were hollowed out and scraped for parts; the cars missing a wheel or an engine. The stores’ aisles were naked and dusty. Windows shattered with jagged shards framing the sills. Signs dangled from a single thread as they advertised a two for one sale on Gain.

No one had been here for ages.

Huston seemed untouched by people.

Huston was quiet.

Which was quite a problem when you were sending in wave after wave of troops to reclaim the city for the past five years. The streets should be littered in gore and carnage. Old bodies decaying under the sun. Flies swarming. Maggots festering in open chest cavities.

Should be a nightmare to stroll through.

Should be foul with the stench of dead meat and the zombies that cannibalized them.

 So where were the bodies?

Where were the zombies sniffing the air with their mouth opened and yellow teeth?

What was going on in Huston?

 

 

[x]

 

 

Shiro stumbled back, shoes sliding, with blood flowing from his nose and over his lip.

Lotor made a _come and get it_ gesture and smirked, bringing his fists up to his face. “That all, Shiro? You all the gossip and none of the deal?”

An obvious taunt. Out of anyone, Shiro was lasting the longest and scoring up hits left and right. Lotor had a career of easy wins so actually fighting someone _good_ and _skilled_ had him anxious. His attacks aimed at pushing Shiro to the wall where the zombies waited for a hand or a foot to fly within chomping distance.

Like now, Shiro darted out of range as one zombie charged him, going for his shoulder.

It caught on the chain and slammed to the ground as it clawed at the air for Shiro with a ghastly scream.

“He’s too focused on Lotor,” Pidge said as she scooted to the end of her seat and flexed her hand open and shut. Nerves. Each second the match progressed wasa second that they had to hold their breaths and pray.

Hunk’s leg bounced up and down.

Keith cracked his fingers because the arena was domed with a fence and last time Keith checked his hands weren’t capable of demolishing metal.

Allura maintained her calm, elegant face. Tension clenched her jaw.

“Shiro’s got this,” Allura assured.

Yea, Keith thought.

Shiro had this.

Shiro was _king_ in the ring.

Shiro had Allura and them drowning in caps because every match he won, every opponent Shiro knocked back down, every zombie who lunged for a bite got a bullet in the skull.

Easy, brain.

Easy, heart.

Easy, stomach.

Shiro would walk out, title and money in hand.

Shiro sprinted for Lotor, arm chambering up for a brutal jab to the face.

The crowd hollered.

The announcer barked out more commentary.

Team Voltron held their breaths, thinking—Land the hit.

Land the hit.

Take us home, Shiro.

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

“This doesn’t make any god damn sense,” Coran grumbled as he looked around the base fortified with a chain-linked fence weighed down with rocks of rumble and topped with barbwire.  “Diana said no one reported in but the camp’s set up. Had to take a day or two to get it ready.”

Lance and the others moved around the makeshift outpost, working in teams of two to check the tents.

Lance stood at the mouth of one tent, the wind flapping the fabric, and signaled to Ester for them to enter in three. She nodded and pressed the stock of the assault rifle to her shoulder.

He counted off with his fingers.

One.

Two.

Three.

They slinked inside, pressed back to back, and swooped the barrel of their rifles over the empty beds. The sheets were folded. Footlockers closed. Not a hair of distress to be gathered from the scene.

It was a total ghost town.

Lance and Ester headed back out, boots crunching.

“Clear,” Lance said.

The wind picked up and blew in plastic bags and fallen leaves.

Cortez and Charlie reported in, “Clear here too.”

Omar walked back with Sergio, saying, “The fuck is going on, where is the unit?”

“So what now?” Ester asked, turning to Lance.

Lance shrugged. “Dunno. We can’t leave until we find something.”

“Stayin’ here is bad, man. Very bad,” Sergio said.

Porsha punched him in the arm, glaring heatedly. “You wait to invite bad vibes here, shut up, man.”

He smoothed his bicep. “Damn, you hit fuckin’ hard.”

Lance had to agree with Sergio; none of this boded well for anyone.

 “I’ll hit you harder if you start jinxing us like that.”

Coran silenced their squabbling. “We’re moving out. This city’s too big for us to cover enough ground in a few hours. I’ll go south. Ester, you’re taking the east. Lance, I want you on the west.  We’ll rendezvous at this location, get here before dark. Understood?”

The troops nodded and waited for further orders. “Cortez, Omar, Porsha, and Mike—you’re with Lance.”

“Charlie, Sergio, Remy, and Celine—you’re with Ester.”

“Maria, Eddy, and Robin with me. Radios will be complete shit once we get distance between each other. So get back the second you see zambos.”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

Shiro’s fist clipped Lotor on the cheek, made the guy back up a few steps as he lost his stability, but Shiro was not in the mood for mercy. His left hooked in hard and bashed Lotor’s other cheek, cracking his face back.

Keith flew out his seat and clapped. “That’s it, Shiro.”

Pidge jumped in. “Fuck him up.”

The crowd went _ballistic_ , hungry for the blood rolling down Lotor’s temple. Hungry, for the sweat beading on Shiro’s forehead. Hungry, for the veins straining in Shiro’s thick forearms as he snatched Lotor by the scruff of his neck and brought his face to his knee.

The zombies, oh man, the iron collars as their necks started to press into their gray skin and cut the flesh.

Yea, they knew blood when they smelled it.

Lotor rolled to his stomach and crawled away from Shiro.

“SHIRO! SHIRO! SHIRO!”

Lotor searched the crowd and gasped out loud when he found the person. “Dad.”

Zarkon watched with a blank face.

One sound sliced the wave of noise in the arena—the audience speaking as one giant, their hands slapping the fence in excitement as they  pressed in for a closer peek, the zombies snarling and gurgling with broken vocals– the sound of metal breaking.

The sound of chains scraping over cement.

When Keith shouted Shiro’s name, it was in fear. “Shiro, behind you!”

Shiro whirled around with one a second to react before the zombie tackled him to the floor and sank his teeth into his arm.

Everything in him went limp. Body on life support. Because the noise coming from the pit was _barbaric_ , Shiro’s pained shouts, the wet tear of skin with yellow gory teeth, the single clap of applause from the other side of the stand where Zarkon sat with a sinister grin of pride.

“Shiro…” Someone said. A person who was breaking.

It was him.

His voice.

Allura screamed, collapsing to her knees with tears in her eyes and her white hair falling into her face, “No!”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

“Lance?” Cortez called.

Lance jogged over. “What?”

Cortez showed him fatigues stiff with old, brown blood.  “They’re dead.”

Suddenly, all the quiet in Huston erupted with an explosion of snarls and growls.

“On our six!”  Omar reported.

“Got zambos on our three,” Porsha yelled as she backed away carefully from the approaching horde of zombies.

Mike said, “Shit, they’re on our ten too.”

Lance looked beyond Cortez’s where the street stretched onward, once emptied and alive with the silence, and watched with a plummeting stomach as zombies filled the street, yellow teeth and gray skinned.

He swallowed. “Twelve o’clock.”

His team looked at him, eyes so full of fear it swindled the air out of his lungs.

Omar laughed, bitterly. “Man, smart fuckers.”

“Who woulda thought,” Porsha forced levity into her voice.

“Been a pleasure,” Cortez said as he looked through the scope of his rifle. “We had a good run, yea?

Mike smiled. “Since we’re dying today, Porsha, you’re one hell of a woman and I would’ve liked making an honest woman out of you.”

“And Mike, I might have said yes.”

Zombies surrounded them and forced the soldiers to press back to back, cornering each other from every angle.

Omar laughed through his tears. “Shit. If we’re making confessions, I’m gay. Got a man back home. I only joined to get him citizenship. I don’t care about living in slums, but I won’t have him live there.”

Cortez lined a shot. “My girl’s pregnant. I’m about to be a daddy.”

Mike asked, “Any last words, Lance? It’s only us and the grave now.”

“Yea,” he croaked, finding a firm grip on his rifle. “I got some. We’re not fuckin’ dyin’. You’re going home to your baby. You’re going back to your man. And I swear to God, you and Mike better get serious after this.”

Porsha nodded and drew her gun. “Another fuckin’ day. Let’s make heads roll, boys.”

Omar whopped. “Bitches are gonna have to tear me limb from limb cause I’m not backin’ down.”

“We’re goin’ home,” Lance said and fired his first shot, bullet a colorful shock of sound among the dead, and drilled a tunnel into the skull of the nearest zombie. It dropped swift, face planting and bleeding a pool of blood. His brothers and sister followed his example, feeding off of his courage and letting it fuel their hearts, so fear had no choice but to retreat for another day and started lighting up the sky with the muzzles of their guns.

Zombies buckled around them as they carved themselves a path through the horde.

“Huurah!”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

Cortez winced, a vicious bite on his calf slowed his speed and lanced pain anytime he leaned on it. He sagged against the wall, gasping.

Lance could sympathize; his lungs _burned_ from racing through Huston decked out in military gear, and his heart tried doing something cruel like beating out of his chest. So much of him hurt, and it had little to do with the zombie hammering him to the ground right before he capped it and everything to do with the fact the team was downed two men, Mike and Omar.

Couldn’t save them.

Couldn’t do shit but watch Mike get pinned down and turned into a gourmet meal for these sick fucks. Could hear him wheeze and wail as they pried open his stomach with dull nails and pulled out his intestines like some twisted carnival trick.

 Lance held the team back, Porsha and the others shouting for Lance to move, and moved the scope to his eye and put the crosshairs on Mike’s thrashing head. Shot him and silenced his screams for good.

Omar went down seconds ago. Seconds.

He covered their six and missed the zombie charging from his ten.

Lance turned in time to see the zombie closing its teeth around his neck.

A bite to an arm or leg and a person could still have a thread of hope to see the next day if they severed the limb in time. The blood flowed slower there, so the infection didn’t spread as rapid. But anywhere else… you couldn’t hack a man’s neck off and expect him to live, right?

Porsha’s AK-47 boomed in his ears as she put them both down.

Now they were taking a breather in the middle of an alley and Cortez limped from a bite.

The sound of gunfire bounced off the tall, vacant buildings and played it back tenfold. They weren’t the only team fighting back. Coran and the others were still kicking back and giving zombies one hell of a fight. Lance just needed to get to the outpost and from there, take the Hummer and ditch this hell hole. Everything else was secondary to their survival.

This city wouldn’t fall.

The zombies wouldn’t let it.

Hadn’t let it for years.

These gross fucks had lured them and the troops before them into an ambush deep within the city. Let them grow comfortable with the silence. Let them get lazy with ease.

Lance pulled on Cortez’s Kevlar vest and tugged him off the wall. “Cortez, move.”

Cortez shoved him off roughly. “Fuck off.”

“I am going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

Porsha sprinted down the alley, face glossy and breathing strained. One hell of a woman Mike had said, damn right she was cause the woman didn’t sob at Mike’s death, didn’t flinch to do Omar, and she wasn’t leaning on the wall for a breather, wasn’t  twisting badly inside like Lance. Hell of a woman.

 “The fence should hold them for a bit. We can’t stay here too long.”

“She’s right. I’ll slow you down,” Cortez wheezed. “And in case you forgot, slinger, I got zambo in me.”

Lance jerked on his vest. “We can cut it off once we get out of here. You have an hour.”

“Lance—“

“I’m not letting you die,” he seethed. “You got a wife and kid.”

“So where are we moving next?”

“I have no clue how far the outpost is to our location. Gotta get somewhere high.”

Porsha tried one of the back doors and when the lock didn’t give, she applied her boot to it. Lance helped, timing their kicks off. The door crashed inward after the sixth round high kicks. Porsha filed in, lighting the space with the light attached to the barrel of the rifle. Lance went and got Cortez to sling his arm around him and helped him hobble inside.

He set him against the wall, and him and Porsha picked up the door and leaned it askew against the threshold. They grabbed whatever they could to barricade the entrance, piling metal shelves, and crates.

Which was good timing because the zombies broke past the fence and scratched at the makeshift blockage.

“Go,” Lance ordered Porsha, taking Cortez again. “We’ll leave through the front and get somewhere safe long enough for me to plan out a route to the post.”

“Okay. Yea.”

“Porsha,” Lance said. “Eyes sharp.”

“Alright. Let’s go.” Porsha took point at the front and checked their corners and blind spots entering each room. “We’re almost—fuck.”

“What?” Lance asked, rushing through, then stopped beside Porsha. “You gotta be fuckin’ with me.”

Zombies pounded on the glass windows of the storefront, smearing dirt and gore on the glass. Wood snapped behind them. Well, there went their barricade.

Porsha ran to the other side of the room and rammed her shoulder to one of the doors. It gave, and she peeked in, then gesture. “Here. There’s some stairs.”

Once Lance and Cortez squeezed through, Porsha closed it and set a chair under the knob. She shouted, “Go, go!”

Lance climbed up two steps at a time, Cortez groaning.

Bodies thumped dully on the door below.

Porsha blitzed through the rooms, searching for a fire escape.

“Got it.” She drove the stock of her rifle to the glass and cleaned off the shards still inside the frame. “Give him to me,” she said from the fire escape.

Cortez screamed as he put weight on his bad leg to shimmy through. “Fuck, fuck.”

“I know. C’mon, man.”

The beats off the door came more sporadic, ravenous as though the zombies could smell a skittering prey. Lance looked back, hands still holding Cortez.

_Thwump_

_Thwump_

_Thwump_

_Crack_

They’re on the stairs, snarling and screeching at one another to get the meat first.

Lance released Cortez and took cover by the door and sounded off rounds.

Porsha yelled, “Lance!”

The narrow hallway slowed the rush of zombies.

He clipped two, muzzles lighting up the faces of the infected and they looked human enough all skin and bones in place, but their teeth were yellow and their skin a ghastly gray but there was nothing human in how they crawled over their dead like roaches fleeing. How one tripped over a body and was trampled by another then another. 

He swung the barrel left and popped off a shot while he walked backward to the window.

“Lance. I got you. Move.” Porsha called, firing off a bullet, and it zipped past his right and clocked out a lunging zombie.

Lance picked it up. Hauled ass. Traded shoots for each step he took until he felt the lip of the window and the violent recoil of Porsha’s rifle right by his ear and grabbed the frame and vaulted through. The fire escaped quivered under their steps.

 Cortez exhaled through his nose loudly on the ledge of the roof, his feet dangled as he watched the steps. “Think something quick.”

There was building on either side of them, but the jump could easily be missed by the slightest miscalculation. Too early and you didn’t touch it. Too late and you dropped. And if the fall didn’t kill you, it would break something no problem, then you had the horde of zombies swarming the perimeter of the building.

“Oh no, I think they figured how to get through,” Cortez said as he slammed a fresh mag in. “Here, I got somethin’ tasty for you motherfuckas.”

“We should have gone down,” Lance complained, wiping sweat off his dark face. He jogged to one corner of the roof.

“The zambos have us pinned. We’re fucked, Lance,” Porsha said, looking at him. “I don’t want to say it, but we’re done. This is as far as we all go.”

Lance jabbed his finger at her nose. “Don’t fuckin’ talk like that.”

“Do you hear any more gunfire from the rest of the team? Listen… See, we’re not getting out of this.”

“Get your head out of your ass and think, Porsha. You wanna cry and die then be my guest, but I’m not doing that.”

“And you’re dumb as fuck if you think pretending there’s a way out will stop this. We’re done.”

“I should kick your ass right now.”

“Go ahead, prick. Do it,” she seethed.

Lance turned away, huffing, and went back to making his rounds.

Give me something.

Anything.

Come on, dammit!

He saw something metal and black. “Porsha.”

“What?”

“We can’t make the jump across but what if we—“

“Go for the fire escape,” she finished, face brightening before it vanished with a frown. “Cortez. Lance, we can’t—his leg.”

“Shit. I… forgot.” He covered his mouth and glared hard across the distance.

Three options; one, leave Cortez to fend off the horde so they can make the leap; two, pop Cortez early so he wouldn’t have to endure a long death being eaten alive; three, stay on the roof and die like the rest before them.

“Jesus Christ, you two,” Cortez cursed loud over the snarls. “Get the fuck outta here.”

“Cortez,” Porsha tried to talk, but the man shook his head.

“I’m dead. Y’all know dat I wasn’t coming home. That zambo juice is flowing fast in me, I know it,” he said. “ I can keep them busy long enough for you guys to get some distance but dat about it.”

“Don’t ask us to leave you here,” Lance begged. “Please. I can’t, man. I can’t let you—“

“Take it as my final wish if it helps. Just get home for the rest of us. Now go!”

 Lance unclicked his vest and tossed his helmet. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry.”

Porsha sniffed, stripped off her heavy gear too. “Fuck!  I’m sorry, Cortez.”

Cortez smiled at them for the final time. “Till we see each other in another life.”

Lance looked to Porsha and nodded.

He launched forward, eyes trained on the fire escape, Porsha was a blur on his right. Gunshots hammered his eardrums. He threw himself over the ledge and felt a brief second of freedom, feeling as though he could touch the sky and leave this place entirely, and the feeling sunk with him as gravity yanked him hard to the ground.

He reached for the rail, fingers wiggling desperately.

Almost.

Almost.

Almost.

His hand closed around the bar and pain tumbled down his arm. He swung up his other arm and exhaled.

Porsha’s fingers lost their purchase on the rail and slipped. “Lance!”

She braced her legs under her body and landed on the balls of her feet, the bones in her ankle snapping like twigs from the impact. She fell on her side, groaning out in pain.

Lance pulled up and over the rails and started down the stairs. “I’m coming.”

And he very much wanted to cry in frustration when growls and gross snarls bellowed through the alley because they couldn’t catch a damn break. The zombies wouldn’t let them fucking breathe.

Porsha shifted on her back and lifted up to her elbows, drawing up her leg to flip the clasp on the thigh holster and wrapped on the stock of the Beretta.  With a great violence, zombies crashed into the tight corner, momentum driving their stiffer limbs straight into the wall, the rest of the horde learned from the ones before them, adjusted and pushed off their backs and bulled forward. There was a twisted sickness in their snarls of glee.

“Hurry, Lance. They’re coming!”

 Porsha sighted low for the knee and blasted off the first zombie’s kneecap. It gave a horrid rasp of anger but continued its endless hunt, dragging it bleeding stump of a leg across the ground. Swung the barrel up and sheared off half the skull of another zombie.

“I’m coming,” he panted down another flight of stair and arched his rifle over the rail and shaved down the numbers to ease the heat on Porsha. Taking down three, he started back into movement, pushing his legs faster and harder.

Porsha shot off with one hand blindly, not counting her ammo, and dragged herself back with the other. “Lance. C’mon. I can’t hold them.”

Lance kicked the ladder down and slid to the bottom, then turned in time to see Porsha’s gun click off a dry round and zombie collapse on top of her with her. She wrestled, pushed her face away from its teeth but the arm fending off its attacks dropped in exhaustion and all Lance saw was the zombie’s back and Porsha’s arms gripping at its head.

“Porsha.”  He saw red.

Charged, yanked hard on that zombie’s head, and a bullet would finish it, but Lance wanted this thing to _hurt_. Hurt bad. Bad as his friends all did, bad as he was currently because he knew Porsha got bit. Knew it was down to him. Knew he failed his team. So he tossed the gun, slipped out his Bowie knife and dragged the point of it slow. Very slow across its neck.

It struggled. Still snapping its jaws at first until he started sawing through the gore of its inside. Through the meat. Through the veins. Through the bone. Blood spurted from its jugular and painted the walls. He s _hould stop_ —no time for revenge or for mourning, no place in his heart for the sound the blade made with each unpolished slice.  But he lost so many. Cortez wasn’t firing off bullets any longer on the roof. Porsha sniffled on the ground with her ankles shattered.

Lance threw the zombie off to the side, his hands and the fabric of his army jacket soaked in red, walked toward the zombie crawling for Porsha and impaled the blade through the skull. Jerked it back out, wiped the blood off the edge before he sheathed it.

“It’s okay.” He cradled Porsha in his arms, ignoring the gash on her neck, the blood that flowed freely like a stream. “I’ll carry you,” he said softly.

She whimpered. “Sorry. For yelling.”

“Don’t. Okay? We’re not done. I’ll get us home, just shoot for me. Can you do that?”

“Lance. It’s okay.”

“No,” he wept and halted the flow of blood with his hand. Little good that did as it oozed out the cracks despite his intentions and his desperation to fix it.

He couldn’t move.

Couldn’t leave again.

Should leave but—

He would wait.

He would do like he didn’t for the others.

Lance could do that for at least someone.

“Stop crying. Idiot. Go home.” Her eyes looked dull, muted, like someone was slowly sucking out the color through a straw. “It’s okay. Go home… it’s… ok…”

She bled out right in his arms.

Just him now.

Just Lance.

And a whole city of the dead.

He picked up his gun, discharged the mag, jammed a fresh one in and broke into a jog.

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

 

Allura hugged herself. “They had to amputate the arm but Shiro’s clear for the infection. They wanna keep him in quarantine though for a few days just in case, you know how city doctors are.”

Hunk wiped his jeans. “I just don’t understand how a zambo could get loose like that. I mean, it’s never happened before, right?”

“Not that I can think of,” Pidge said as she picked at the thread unraveling at the hem of her shorts. “Mystery.” No conviction carried through her words.

“That’s because Zarkon rigged the fight,” Keith said.

Allura’s eyes widened, and she looked around the hospital ward for curious ears before saying, “I told you not say that out loud.”

“You know I’m right. As soon as Lotor started to lose, a zambo’s chain just happened to break. Not likely,” he scoffed.

 He couldn’t believe Allura was entertaining the idea that today’s accident was pure happenstance. A poor draw of the cards. How many fights before Shiro and this was the one for a zombie to get off their chain and take a chunk.

Lotor knew he couldn’t best Shiro.

Zarkon knew his son couldn’t win the match, so he did the next best thing to cheating and had the chain loosened from the inside of the arena.

“We can’t prove anything,” Allura argued.

Keith got up and stalked to Allura. “I don’t need any proof and if you’re not gonna do shit about it. I will.”

“I understand you’re hurting, Keith. We are all. But don’t think cause you’ve known him longer that this hurts you more than us.”

“Fuck you.”

He flipped her off and stormed outside.

What Allura thought was Keith blowing off steam and being dramatic, was Keith actually making dialogue in New Cali. The right amount of money loosened all tongues, and those tongues gave names and directions. His persuasion brought him to a thug named Thace, one of Zarkon’s guy on the payroll. Thace liked the money of working under such a wealthy name, the guy though, he wouldn’t get personal but he was a dick.

Thace organized the casual meet-up at a dingy bar.

Keith found him at the front right where the bartenders rang up orders and ignored certain people.

He slid into a stool and asked for a beer, tipping the young man with a few caps.

Thace didn’t acknowledge him with a greeting. “What do you want to know?”

“The match. One zambo went loose, and I wanna know if that was planned.”

“Can’t say,” Thace said. “But Zarkon likes the world from the top and so does Lotor. They’re the people to do anything to maintain it.”

That unhinged Keith’s cool. He talked to Thace directly, looking at the man’s diamond sharp profile. “So they rigged the fight.”

Thace cupped his jaw and pulled Keith into a wet kiss, forcing his mouth wide with his tongue and groaned loud. Everything in Keith told him to buck off or at least shorten Thace’s wet tongue, but the guy’s hand was an iron clamp on his jaw.

He pulled back, whispering low over Keith’s mouth. “Do you know how it would look if people saw us talking, me to Voltron? Your guy got hurt. I get your hurting, boy, but play it wise.”

Keith jerked back and downed his beer, mouth filled with Thace’s taste. Like old cigars and exquisite foods. “So that was for?”

“For people to think we’re going to fuck once we walk out.”

“I want to get Z. Can you get me close?”

“You’re going after  Z?” Thace laughed in disbelief. “Shiro must be something for you to take on that challenge.”

“Then help me start a case and present it to the mayor.”

Thace shook his head, a bittersweet smile on his lips. “No one’s going against Z. Who do you think supplies them at a discount? Who do you think takes care of competitors during the elections? Z has deep ties, Keith. You have a better chance sneaking into his club.”

“Get me in.”

“That was a joke. Let it die.”

“Shiro’s in the god damn hospital. Missing an arm. And maybe you missed it from your little perch, but two arms are better than one in a fight.”

“Let’s talk outside,” Thace said. “The beer is getting you to talk real crazy.”

Keith hopped down, moving fast to keep up their argument when Thace’s hand reached back and cupped his ass. “What the—“

“It’s for the show,” he said, tugging Keith close to his side and splayed his fingers wide back there. Anyone who was observing with suspicious snorted and went back to sipping their drink “Play along.”

 Once they were alone and away from questionable eyes and ears, Keith shoved Thace’s hands. “You gotta grab me like that?”

“Fine. I’ll admit I think you’re fine but this is Z’s turf, and his crew is large. I have to be careful.”

“Can you get me in?” Keith pressed.

Thace chewed on his lip. “Fine. If you wanna run it, then I’ll get you inside. You go straight. No detours. And if you get caught up, then it’s on you. Don’t drop my name.”

“I’m expectin’ you want payment for this.”

“Course, risking my ass too in this.”

“But you benefit if I do kill Z.”

“In a way, I don’t like Z. Some of my friends feel that way too, but they like the money he brings for doing jack shit.”

“Must be nice.”

“Give me a few days to set up the security detail. I’ll place our shitty guards for the night. Pay me then.”

 

 

[x]

 

 

 They’re on his ass, what part of the horde that couldn’t squeeze past the squad to get a lick at one of the many meals bloodying up the city. Lance whirled and fired three clean shots, the sound blasting through the city, and the zombies plummeted.

Lance picked up the pace, inhaling and exhaling out his mouth. He’d ditched his long sleeved jacket and roasted under the sun in his tank, cargo pants, and dog tags.

He had more on his tail, but these had age or an injury hindering their gait, so Lance didn’t worry. Kill the fast ones, they’re trouble. Converse your ammo. This was no time to be bloodthirsty.  

He read the street names on a wide intersection for a familiar name then turned down on it. The buildings sparked his memory—the outpost was near. Lance jacked it into overdrive, amped up.

So amped that he nearly pulled the trigger on the body flying fast at him. He sighted, blue eyes ice cold through the scope before Coran yelled. “Lance? Easy, easy, kid.”

Lance lowered the gun, too stunned. Too afraid to say Coran’s name out loud for fear that he might disappear too. “You’re real?”

Coran tapped his skull, voice a fucking beautiful gift with its odd accent. “Did you hit your head, of course I am.”

“The group?”

Coran bowed his head, lifted it, and scratched his mustache. “It’s just me.”

“Ester too?” Had to ask. To be sure they weren’t about to dip with someone still taking a breath in this doomed city.

He shook his head somberly, the mirth which usually harbored comfortably on his person a stranger now. A ghost.  The dead took more than bodies, nah, they loaned out souls too. Made the debt high and the interest costly. “You?”

“Just me.”

“Damn,” Coran paced a few steps, not knowing where to place the lost or what to do with the knowledge; hell, Lance hardly knew what to do with the images carved in his brain, and kicked out the headlights of a rusty old Honda.

He rubbed his mouth, going still. Then reanimated with some life, shooting Lance an expression.  “Things wanted us to get comfy here. Freakin’ ambushed us.”

“You bit?”

A silence swarm Coran. “Are you?”

“No… Are you?”

“Now yer talkin’ crazy, boy. Let’s go.” Coran laughed off abruptly like a switch and clapped Lance on the shoulder. “The camp’s a few blocks ahead. Move, soldier.”

 

The sight of those chain-linked fences did his heart wonder, and his hands fumbled around the heavy duty chain and pushed the gate open. Coran was two paces behind him, his stamina flagged faster and faster than Lance was used to. Dude was old but fit as hell and many times they had to keep up with his manic and wild pace.

He bulldozed into the camp, knowing Coran was on his six and would make up the difference easily.

The Hummers loitered in the middle of the outpost without an entourage of zombies. Finally, a god damn break.

Coran panted as he leaned against a pole.

“You need help?”

“What, no, get the car ready. I’m fine.”

Lance stepped in the Hummer. “Get in,” he called from the driver seat, flipping the visor, so the key dropped out.

With a concerning sluggishness, Coran climbed in. Leaned his head back and exhaled harshly out his mouth like he couldn’t swallow any air. His cheeks were blisteringly red and glossy.

“Coran.” Lance examined him.

“Kid, get us out.”

Lance slotted the key in, turned it and the car rumbled briefly then sputtered out.

He hit the steering wheel; panic a swift moving toxin back in his body. “Come the fuck on.”

“Car’s old. Keep trying. We got two other ones to try out,” Coran assured

His fingers quivered, stomach rolled up tar and acid like a rough ride into the woods, his head pounded something awful, and it was all the result of the constant adrenaline feeding into his body and the close promise of home dwindling out of reach.

Coran shook him by the shoulder. “Lance. Lance! Kid, I need you to get this thing moving now.”

“Wh—what?”

“We’ve got company. Nasty, rotten little pricks.” Coran rolled down the window and stabilized his Hunting Rifle on the sill, breathed out slowly, and pulled the trigger.

The rifle kicked back. Blood and brain matter exploded, the body managed a step then fell. Coran pulled back the bolt, the casing flying out, popped a new caliber and started on the sprinters who contorted their bodies past the gate.

Lance tried the engine, cursing. “Work, fucker.”

It rumbled then died.

“Lance,” Coran called, alarmed. The color of panic in his voice.

He saw over Coran’s body as the horde headed to the Hummer. “Roll the god damn window up.”

Coran drew the rifle back, rolled the window in time for the wave to slam against the passenger side.

“I’m getting real sick of this shite,” Coran grumbled. The Hummer swayed side to side as the zombies climbed the hood. He fired an exasperated glance at the roof. “Well, there goes my idea of using the turret.”

“Why did I pick the shitty one?” Lance turned the key again; nothing.

“Well, I’m blamin’ you if we die here.”

“Real funny, Coran,” he barked. “Don’t just stare, grab a damn shotgun.”

“And make a hole for them to claw my face. Nah.”

Spider cracks split on the glass, spreading wider.

“Kid!”

“I know.”

Work.

Work.

Fucking work dammit.

He jerked the key hard.

The ignition caught.

“Buckle up,” Lance instructed, doing his belt, and jerked the clutch into reserve and stomped hard on the gas. The Hummer roared backward, zombies tumbling over the hood and roof. One dangled determinedly on the windshield, skin deeply embedded in the barb wire laced around the edges of the Hummer.

Coran pumped the shotgun and blasted a gaping hole into the glass, severing the zombie’s lower body from its torso.

“Go. Go.”

 He threw it in drive and turned the panel of the windshield into a bloody old massacre. Bodies tumbling over the car. Clipping zombies that charged head first and rolling their bodies under the tires. Bones just snapping like dried branches in the winter from the weight of it. Carnage. Annihilation. For a moment, there wasn’t the plan to escape the city. It was just this. Wiping them away like dirt. Shifting that power back into his hands when he learned to be in nature of fear and caution his whole life. Letting the savagery melt on his body like an armor.

Cranked the wheel, rooster tailed the Hummer in a full 360 and pressed on the break, thinking, _run them over. Take down this whole god damn city. Leave them nothing._

Coran closed his hand over Lance’s and twisted the steering wheel. “Lance. Enough.”

He blinked, saw the horde of thirty zombies once banging on the Hummer now on the floor of the outpost in varied states physical trauma—skulls squashed like melon, white bones speared through skin, tire marks made in red. Those not sporting a crushed skull, dragged their broken bodies to them in some vain hope for food.

Horrid. In that much pain. Physically wrecked. And they still wanted a bite.

 Yea, but Lance applied the savagery, right; like prior with Porsha. It felt kind of good, right?

So who was fucked up now,  he or them?

 “… Okay,” he exhaled.

“Gun it before the whole lot of them show up. We’re on the devil’s time now.”

 The Hummer rumbled down one of the stretches of highways not eroded by the elements. Blood obscured his vision in front but he could manage; besides there wasn’t any traffic to speak of. Just the husks of it  pressed against the guardrails.

 Coran breathed hoarsely. Each breather harder than the last. He looked to have a fever.

Lance braked, glaring at the wheel. “You’re infected.”

“… What gave me away?”

“Were you going to tell me or wait until you turned and bit my ass too?”

He winced.

“Why did you lie to me?”

“If I told you, would you’ve been able to focus on completing the mission? I didn’t want you thinkin’ about another person. I wanted you out.”

“Lemme see it.”

“It ain’t gonna help shite, kid.”

Yea, but if he didn’t get the visual confirmation, then his mind would still try to conjure up other realities where they both emerged clean. “Show me.”

Coran tugged on the folded collar of his jacket, the bite right on the space before his shoulder sloped into his neck, and Lance could only see it once before looking away and feeling sick all over again.

He punched the wheel, horn blaring for a long moment until Coran laid his hand off it. 

“What now?”

“I can make half the trip with you until you know,” Coran made a gun with his hand and cocked it to the temple and mimicked the sound and recoil of a round. “Or we have a little R&R. Personally, I’d rather smoke up and drink up before dying.”

“I saw some houses a few miles from here. Should be clear. We can lay there.”

“Alright.”

Lance mounted the curb and unbuckled his belt, taking his assault rifle with him. “I’ll do a clean sweep,” he said to Coran. “Honk the horn three times if you see anything.”

“I can shoot,” Coran protested and moved to prove Lance that very fact, yet doing the simple task of turning and hefting the shotgun winded him.

Lance eased him back into the seat through the window. He hung his arms on the sill, smiling at the old bastard.

Been through hell and back. Infected. And he still wouldn’t lay down. Gotta admire it; that strength got Lance through a lot of tough jams when they lost people, when the odds were always against them, when Lance believed for certain none of them would come back.

Now he had to be Coran’s strength. For the first and last time.

“You’re sweating like a damn hog. A still one at that,” Lance said. “You won’t do jack. Let me handle everything.”

“Fine. I was just being polite.”

“Sure.”

“And get dat dang zombie corpse off the hood, I’d like to look at something nice if I’m just gonna sit on my ass.”

Lance jerked on the corpse, the flesh tearing after a few forceful tugs, then heaved the torso on the lawn, put his arms out wide like _there, happy_ in an exaggerated gesture of annoyance.

 Like the good old days.

 They would be that—good old days.

 Days in your mind and heart tinted with nostalgia as a twisting reminder. Days which reminded you maybe you should’ve been kinder. Should’ve said sorry. Should’ve tried that hug, but you weren’t in the mood for it.

Already he felt regret.

Already he could lose count on his fingers all the times he should’ve thanked Coran for being the dad he didn’t have. For being a mentor. For being a friend. For pulling his ass out of the heat. Lance came in the military with too much attitude and so much rage and apathy.

 Thought, fuck these people I’m here for my six years and I’m counting them, until Coran set him straight and put a sledgehammer to his walls. Got Lance smiling and singing like he did when he was with his mom and Gabby. Got Lance to call people friend and not soon-to-be-dead person number two hundred and something.

 Now, he got Lance remembering why walls were good and why he was so angry, so apathetic, so hostile—everything good in his life got taken away.

Lance climbed the porch, leaving his thoughts to curl somewhere far from his mind.

House turned out clean. Any salvageable food was looted. Most of the clothes gone. Pills or medical bandaged swiped up by someone else. Frames hung crooked with dust and grime on the glass. The only thing of use was the mattress and blankets which he dragged to the living room, piled into something comfortable for Coran, then barred the rear entrance.

He helped Coran inside and eased him against the cushions he had propped to the wall.

“You made me a death bed,” he laughed. “You slippery prick.”

Lance rummaged through one of the military canvas bag, wisely not concerning himself with the fact that he was going through his dead friend’s shit like some looter, and found Cortez’s flask. He shook it by his ear, smiling when he heard it sloshed around.

“Here.” He had half a mind to chuck it across the room where Coran sat until he listened to his shallow breaths and watched the pasty whiteness of his skin turn a muted gray. He walked.

Coran opened his eyes slowly. “Thanks. Sit. You moving too much.”

“I don’t—“

“Sit. Dat’s an order.

“Okay.”

Lance sat.

Didn’t like it cause with his body stationary, his mind started making their own tracks and the pathways led to nowhere good.

Led to questions like why me?

Why wasn’t it me?

Why am I still alive?

I haven’t done shit to earn it.

Should’ve been me.

Should’ve been me back there.

“You came here about fifteen,” Coran started to ramble. “Yea high, blue eyes, and a bug up your ass. My first thought was, ah fuck, now I gotta hope this asshole doesn’t accidentally shoot my ass. Den I saw you in the range. Fuckin’ solid aim. Best damn marksman I did ever see, and you were a kid. Your endurance was shite though.”

He remembered. Coran nearly choked on his cigar as he watched the new recruits test out their skills on the shooting range. He had grinned then as the whole camp just stared, bewildered, impressed, when each bullet hit its mark without fail.

Lance dragged his fingers over the assault rifle. “Yea. You choked.”

“Well, you were a scrawny bean pole so yea, I didn’t expect much.”

He chuckled. “Yea. You were like, ‘Damn no wonder they sent me you. Ain’t got no meat. Zambos will probably think you’re a skinny ass tree.’”

“Den you hit the weights and look at ya,” he gestured. “Now you’re a big ass tree.”

Red veins lined his eyes.

Everyone turned at their own rate, but the rule of thumb put it between a few hours to a day at the most. Fever. Excessive sweating. Disorientation. Slurred speech. Bloodshot eyes.  Labored breath. Loss of skilled motor controls. Exhaustion.

Coran was turning fast.

Might be the rush of blood from running and fighting zombies. Gave the infection that little boost.

Fucked to think how every second his body was undergoing this change. The change that would take Coran’s mind but leave the body intact and able.

Coran sipped the moonshine, missing his mouth on a few tries. “Yer a good kid, Lance. Like a son, if I were to be honest.”

“You’re good too. White as hell though.”

Coran started to laugh before he wheezed dryly. “How did they go down?”

Lance wiped his nose, sniffling. “Swinging, you know us, Coran. We kick ass.”

“Well, at least I’ll have plenty of company. We can finally talk all da smack about ya.”

“Heaven seems the place to be.”

“For us. Not you. You keep your rear here. I don’t wanna see you until you old and gray.”

“I’ll try.”

“You a good kid, Lance,” he slurred. “Good kid. Love you.”

Lance lifted his head and looked to the man who he realized with such a profoundly gutting feeling that he loved him not as a father but as his own. Knew those feelings were showing in his face as his eyes burned and his throat clogged up and all the organs in him twisted into gnarly things and squeezed and squeezed.

“I…I—Coran.”

“Hey, kid, do me a favor, yea? Play me sumthang, please.”

He nodded, got on his numb feet, shuffled to the Hummer and wrestled out the old guitar he had picked up years ago.

When he walked back in, Coran’s eyes were shut and his hand had a weak grip around the flask. Lance set the guitar against the wall, reached for the rifle, and started slowly because he wanted to be wrong. Cause he wanted to fuck up and let zombie Coran bite him too so he’d have a good excuse to blow his own brain. Cause he couldn’t watch another face etched in his heart fade.

He lifted the barrel. Waited.

Come on.

Come on.

Coran blinked. “Not dead yet, kid.”

“Jesus,” Lance lowered it, suffocating on air. “I fuckin’ thought— Fuck.”

“Play me sumthang.”

“Why are you acting like we have tomorrow?” He shouted.  Felt hot. Felt gutted. Felt a hundred blades going through him and nicking every vital. It hurt more to cry and admit he was scared so he yelled louder because it was the only thing in his power he could do. The one thing he had some damn control over. “You don’t. I have to shoot you. I have to walk back without you. Without Porsha, Ester, Charlie, Cortez, Omar…I have all these god damn graves on my hands.”

Coran reached out and tugged meekly, so damn weak, on his wrist to bring him down. “Sit down.”

He collapsed to his knees, gun forgotten beside him, and curled inward. Curled like it would keep everything far away from him. Curled like he could hide from the reality.

Said to the floor. “Coran. I can’t shoot you. I can’t pretend.”

Hands combed through his hair, slow and sweaty. “’M sorry, kid. Wish ya didn’t have to do this.”

And what a righteous asshole Lance was, making Coran who was on his deathbed comfort _him_. Him, who walked through it all untouched. Who had his body and mind.

“No. It’s…I’m sorry. Lemme…” He straightened, sucked down the sadness and the pain, and leaned for the guitar, setting it across his lap. “Any requests?”

Coran lolled his head to the side and mumbled low, “Sumthang nice for the soul.”

His fingers found purpose on the bridge, strumming out a slow and soulful melody.

 

_Someone told me long ago There's a calm before the storm,_

_I know; It's been comin' for some time._

_When it's over, so they say, It'll rain a sunny day,_

_I know; Shinin' down like water._

_I want to know, Have you ever seen the rain?_

_I want to know, Have you ever seen the rain_

_Comin' down on a sunny day?_

_Yesterday, and days before, Sun is cold and rain is hard,_

_I know; Been that way for all my time._

_'Til forever, on it goes Through the circle, fast and slow,_

_I know; It can't stop, I wonder._

Coran’s eyes fluttered closed.

The air moving in his chest stopped.

He laid there, still as death.

Infected.

He set aside the guitar and watched for— God, for how long did he sit in the growing darkness with nothing but the moon and a flashlight for light, endless minutes until Coran moved. He shifted, growling low as he opened his eyes.

He sighed, aimed steady, then said to the zombie. “You were a dad to me.”

 

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

Lance jumped back into the Hummer, started the engine, and steered it down the road. Behind him, the sun climbed on Huston with his friend’s bodies filling the streets, their blood on the pavement, their bodies in the mouths of the infected. His faith in the world stayed too, irrecoverable. His passion and heart to wipe this world clean.

Sun glared through the window, bouncing off the metal of the dog tags around his neck—

His.

And Coran’s.

 

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

The hulking tanks of muscles at guard on the outside of Zarkon’s office didn’t know what to make of Keith, and it was understandable—small at least to their beastly standards, long hair,  a camera face in a dirty skin mag, attitude on his lips, Asian;  these guys wouldn’t be pissing themselves over him anytime soon with those small arms and legs—so they figured pretty boy got a little lost from the party downstairs. Probably on weed or liquor.

Except Keith didn’t look lost — was a homicidal level of pissed—and his strides were polished, the violence in his limbs controlled, and his eyes fathered chaos.

But the guards were lazy and content with their position and power and like, who the fuck was going to run up on them, right?

Keith.

Keith was running up fast.

Putting a bone shattering, mean ass hook of a punch to one’s face and while he tumbled into unconsciousness, Keith ran up on the other guard. Sunk low, wrapped his hands tactfully around the hands holding a pistol meant for him, and got the guard to drop it.  Took his moment of pain and kicked the back of his knee so he knelt and coiled his forearm around his trachea, suffocating him.

His knuckles ached vividly where bone hit bone.

Done with the security detail, Keith dragged their slumbering bodies into a storage closet down the hall.

Zarkon watched the club goers through a partition of glass from the upper floor, lights danced over him in purple. Wore his wealth on his body. Dressed expensively, elegantly, coolly in slacks and a button up. Smelled artificial, almost chemical—a cologne which with his kingdom Zarkon could easily afford.  Looked like money, dirty money.

Keith wasn’t great with introductions so he didn’t give one and cocked his pistol loud.

Zarkon turned, brown eyes calm despite the iron pinned on him. “I know you.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “You’re one of Allura’s, right? Keith Kogane, correct me if I’m wrong I do hate being impolite to guests.”

“Maybe you’ll remember my friend, Shiro, he was kicking your boy’s ass pretty good.”

“Shiro…Shiro…” Zarkon said as if trying to conjure up the memory. “Ah, Shiro. The handsome fella, right? Nice face that one. Sometimes in the ring, you have some righteously ugly sons of guns.”

Zarkon winced, speaking privately to Keith. “News is they cut his arm off. Bad for business. It’s a real shame, Shiro showed a lot of promise. ”

“Yea, enough for you to let loose a zambo, right?”

“I understand that day was quite harrowing, but I was in the stadium same as you, there’s no feasible way that I could’ve interfered with the match. The infected broke free. It was beyond all our control.”

“Do you think I’m fuckin’ stupid?”

“I don’t think there’s ever been a moment where someone fooled you. Except yourself, of course.”

“The fuck?”

“Say you kill me, then what, you walk? Shiro gets his arm back? All is right as rain,” Zarkon said. “I have men whose pockets I fill greatly. I have my son who would take over in my place. There’s no outcome where you live. Which I don’t think you care either way but Shiro…”

Keith flinched, the way he said Shiro’s name flying at him swift like a fist.

“Right there, that’s what I’m talking about.” He slipped his hand out of his pocket, pointed loosely at his face. “You care about him. Best way to teach a man a real lesson is hurting his heart. The body heals. The heart, not so much.”

Silence.

Zarkon let that sink in long and deep.

Like yea, kill me, Keith. But your boy, Shiro, he goes with me.

“I won’t though.”

“Like I believe you,” he spat.

“What happened was just business, nothing personal. I don’t dislike the man. You, on the other hand, while I appreciate your bravery, I don’t take well to threats.”

“I’m the one with the gun here.”

“Yes. But you didn’t kill my guards, and that was a very, very stupid decision.” Zarkon directed a smile at the wall behind him, the door clicked shut, and two bodies walked in the room.

Fucking Keith.

Stupid.

Reckless.

Came in for blood but wouldn’t spill all the blood because while Keith had done some terrible shit in his life, he wouldn’t be a senseless killer and pop guys for running in Zarkon’s crew. Yea, maybe his soul was a tiny bit cleaner for it, but that was the end of the pros.

See what a clean bill got you in the grave, Keith-boy.

“Shit.” He moved his arms up and to the sides slowly, dangled the pistol in his right hand  when he felt a barrel to the back of his skull.

 One of the guards relieved him of it. Nice, a little memento for beef head.

“James. Abraham. Show Keith the exit. Keep it clean. Let Allura find him when you’re done.”

“You piece of sh—“ Air whooshed out his him from the fist drilling to his solar plexus.

“Not in my office, James, please,” Zarkon sighed like a mother tired of her kids running around the house.

“Sorry, sir.”

“It’s fine. Just respect this space, I’m so tired of blood stains on my floors. Beat him on the ground level if you have to get it out your system.”

The two tanks, James and Abraham, put a hand under each pit and ushered him to the door to do just that— beat Keith bloody and broken until he had no other chocie but to plead for an exit. The guy with the face which looked like someone took a war hammer to, was especially excited. His hand clenched hard, and he started talking about the pretty parts of Keith he planned to hurt first.

Keith debated whether a kick to his balls would persuade a faster end or a slower beating.

Then started to feel terror ignite in him because they’re about to leave through the door and once that was done, Keith had no hope.

Allura opened the door from the other side, Hunk there with a pump action shotgun and Pidge with dual SMGs.

“Hands off,” she said.

Hunk pumped the gun single-handedly, aimed it high. “You heard the lady.”

“Seems I’m quite popular today,” Zarkon mussed, walking to the built in mini bar. “Let them in. Watch the boy.”

The guards dumped Keith into a chair and stood on either side of him.

He pinned to two glasses between his fingers and poured two fingers lengths of whiskey. “Allura, have a drink.”

She turned to Pidge and Hunk. “Shoot them if they try anything funny.”

“Listen, bitch—“ beef head started.

Pidge pointed the gun. “Whoa, hey, language. You be nice to her, or I’ll shoot your balls off.”

 Zarkon set a glass on the counter. “Let’s drink.”

Allura sat on the stool and clinked her glass against Zarkon’s, shot it back. “Let Keith go.”

“He came here to kill me.”

“Well, he isn’t in a clear state of mind.”

“A threat is a threat. I let one guy walk with a slap on the wrist, and everyone will think it’s open season on me. People fear me more than they respect me. You should understand this, Allura, with your father being head of the Altean cartel.”

“My father doesn’t need fear. He has respect. Maybe you should take lessons from him, you might learn something.”

Zarkon traded a look with one of his guys before a fist went hurtling toward his face. It shot Keith back into the chair, cupping his nose where it gushed out blood.

Hunk’s shotgun tapped the back of the guy’s head.

Pidge dual-wielded the submachine guns when the other guard went reaching for his piece.

Allura jolted up. “What are you—“

“That’s a lesson for you, Allura. Insult me again and I’ll have them remove an eye. Now tell your people to lower their guns.”

“Lower them,” she growled, staring directly at Zarkon.

He smirked.

“Allura, come on,” Pidge protested.

“I’m with Pidge on this,” Hunk agreed, fingers itchy on the trigger. “Cap them.”

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“Fine,” Pidge grumbled, sneering mean when one of the guards grinned. “The hell you looking at ugly, you want your balls on a plate for the infected, look elsewhere.”

“Keith, you okay?”

Keith pinched his nose. “Fu— just broken is all. ‘M fine.”

“See, sweetheart. Fear works far better than respect. If you want your boy Keith, then you gotta pay for him cause he’s my boy now. I own him. I can do what I want with him.”

“Name it.”

Keith moved in his seat. “Allura. Don’t.”

“Shut up, Keith. Tell me how much.”

“Two thousand caps.”

Allura gasped. “Excuse me.”

“What, is he not worth it? I know the value of my products and Keith’s real pricey. I would go as far to say he’s a better product than Shiro. Kid has balls. Balls are worth a thousand.  And well, you have to account aesthetics as well when selling, and he’s very pleasing to the eye. So another thousand right there. If I wanted to be an asshole, I would throw in another for his ethnicity. We don’t get many Asians here. But you’re a daughter of an old acquittance so I’ll be charitable and charge you the two.”

“So what’s it gonna be, Allura? What do you value more, friends or money, cause you can’t have both in this world.”

“I’ll pay.”

“Just like that?”

“Yea.”

Zarkon slammed his hand on the counter. “Fine day doing business with you, Allura.  And you, Keith, you get to live another day. What luck.”

“I have to get the money.”

“Certainly. Keith will be here when you return.”

“My people stay and watch your people.”

“I wouldn’t dare injure  the man, but if it eases your mind, one can stay. Three to two isn’t very fair. We should be fair to each other.”

“Pidge,  you stay with Keith.”

“No problem.”

“Hunk, let’s go.”

Hunk grabbed Keith’s shoulder, “Hang in there. We’ll be back for you.” 

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

Zarkon counted the money only to deepen the wound in Allura’s pride and the guilt and shame in Keith’s mind. “Two thousand.”

“Like I said, Z. I don’t rip people,” Allura commented snippily.

Zarkon deposited the caps into one of his drawers, stood up, and offered up his hand to conclude their business. “Give Shiro my best,” he said, shaking Allura’s hand.

She jerked back. “Eat shit.”

Hunk pulled Keith to his feet, tossing an arm around his waist, and walked him out. The bridge of his nose looked crooked, his mouth caked with tracks of dried blood. Purple swelled under the bags of his eyes.

Keith slipped out of his hold once they’re outside, leaning his back against the wall of an old building. Pidge tipped his chin, examined the breakage of his nose with her fingertips. He winced when she prodded the jut against the skin.

“I can reset it when we get back. The break doesn’t feel too bad,” she said after looking it over. “It’s going to hurt like a bitch though.”

“Feels bad to me.”

“No duh. It’s a bone and you got it broken.”

“How did you know?” Keith asked Allura.

“You’re not very subtle about things, I had Pidge follow you around. I was worried you might try something stupid and I was right,” she said. “What were you thinking, Keith?  I love Shiro too, we all do, but that’s not the way to help him. How do you think he’d feel knowing you died trying to get revenge for him?”

He wasn’t thinking.

Focused on the rage.

The fear that exploded in his gut when he saw Shiro go down from the stands, powerless to jump in and help.

The nail hammered home that—

 Shiro could’ve died.

Despite the desperation fluttering wildly and frantically like a caged bird in his chest, Keith watched. Paralyzed.

That he could’ve done something, should have, and didn’t.

That Shiro did so much for others, such a selfless guy, and this was the card dealt to him.

That scum like Zarkon got away while people like Shiro ate shit.

That with the walls, the houses, the money, the electricity— this world wasn’t safe and never would be.

Keith said nothing; what could he say to justify it other than he had to do something with the anger and the helplessness.

“We get payback by coming back here and kicking Zarkon’s and Lotor’s asses in the ring. I know Shiro was still training you but right now, money-wise it isn’t good. We don’t know how long it would take for Shiro to recover—“

“I’ll do it, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ll get you back the money.”

“I don’t want to toss you in.”

“That’s fine cause I’m doing it. I’ll get us back on our feet. Then I’m coming for Lotor’s crown.”

“Then you’re going to need to bust your ass. Starting from the ground up.”

“Sign me up.”

Pidge snorted. “This guy, seriously. Broken nose and he still wants to kill infected.”

 

 

[x]

 

 

Dog tags clinked on the table, they fell on the side with his name indented into the metal. Coran’s tag followed the chain under his shirt. The one thing he had of the guy.

 Diana turned around from where she had an old map of the United States spread out and marked with the borders of government re-established cities, accessible roads, and sectors still swarming with zombies. Two other officers were in the room, they looked clean so he figured they’re cut from the same cloth.

“Lance?” She squinted, then naturally peeked over him for Coran.  His heart hurt cause he still did that since Huston, still turning around and expecting to see all their faces like it was all a bad dream. “Where’s—“

“Huston is for the zambos. Burn it down.”

She didn’t believe him, still checking for the flap of the tent in lieu of Coran’s arrival but only the breeze moved through it. Only gray light and the noise of the entire camp running through drills, errands, and duties.  “I want to talk to Coran.”

“You can’t,” he said. Let her put the dots together; a damn commander could manage that much at least.

“He’s…” Diana didn’t finish it, almost expecting Lance to correct her.

“I shot him after he turned. Don’t worry.”

Diana steadied herself by grasping the table, one hand coming up to smother any sound of grief she might be feeling. None did, and it pissed him off. “Jesus.”

Yea, Jesus.

God.

Whoever.

You’re _hearing_ it.

I fucking _lived_ it.

I stood for hours, tried to memorize all of him because all I would have from now on would be memories. Tried not to think about the hole in my stomach killing me as I watched him turn to one of them. Watched him lose every bit of him strong and human. Then watched my own gun, my hands, my bullet go in his head—the spray of blood hitting the wall, the blankets, my face. Covering his body with the blankets as I tried to convince myself I wasn’t a killer. It had to be done. I had to shoot my best friend.

But sure, _you_ feel bad.

Get fucked, Diana.

“I completed the mission,” Lance said. “ Now I’m done with this. Taking my guns and the car, not that you would want it with all the blood and dents. Good luck with your crusade.”

The starred uniforms looked, faces twisted with that snotty elitist attitude, at the grunt trying to talk bigger about issues his mind couldn’t begin to comprehend. And the fucked part of it was Lance could put one between theirs eyes before they blinked. They had power in influence and status but none in the physical body, but they regarded Lance as the scum.

Men like me are the reason y’all can get fat and comfy behind walls, Lance thought, men like me die every day to get through the doors you shut on everyone who ain’t white or with heavy pockets.

Maybe I don’t have money, but I can outlast any of you in the streets.

“Lance,” Diana called. “You’re just going to let Coran and everyone’s lives be in vain by walking out, think about it. Don’t be guided by your anger. Take it and help me get back the old world for them. For everyone.”

Lance laughed, bitter and acidic, and was it not for the two generals overseeing their exchange he’d knock her out. “Don’t talk to me like that. You don’t know shit about me. And you don’t have a fuckin’ clue what I had to do in Huston,” he barked.

Lance got close, lowered his voice, and melded it with violence.  “You wanna die out there…” He gestured sharply. “Be my guest.  Me though, I’ll take the pass. If you don’t like it, then shoot me.”

“Finish your time. Get your citizenship, Lance.”

“I don’t want shit from you guys. I’ll get by on my own. Have fun getting eaten.”        


	2. How low

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember than anti-hero tag, it comes into play a lot with Lance. 
> 
> Also all chapter titles are from song lyrics, cause i'm very inventive (not).
> 
> Expect weekly updates on the weekends if this changes, i'll let you guy know but i have pre-written chapters. I'm finishing up 6 atm.

The problem with resigning from the military was you no longer got the perks of having your family stationed at one of the main outposts. The minute he’d arrived, they evicted them. They moved to the slums outside of Chi-Town while Lance tried to make money for four citizen passes. Which was tough because all the jobs with reasonable wages were inside the city walls and the city didn’t mind slummers building a settlement around them but going inside without permission was criminal.

So to get money to get the right to live in the city, Lance had to sneak into the city and take shady jobs to sneak back out and stash it away.

Ironic.

He helped clear cities so the government could rebuild society, but they didn’t want him living in their cities.

There were temp passes into the city which offered admittance inside until curfew. But the same logic applied, they wanted to give those out to productive people, and in their eyes he wasn’t. His sister, Gabby, was with her limited medical knowledge.

Maybe he should’ve stuck it out. Finish his years, cause at about this time in two years he would’ve been done.

Yea, but he couldn’t handle being placed with a new lot of troops and a new captain. Being expected to fucking care again about walking corpses. Being expected like some much of him didn’t die in Huston.

His family understood it, gave him no grief when he returned.

They really got it when the nightmares started in the middle of the night, Lance’s shouts woke the whole house with a freight. His mom had to rock him against her chest despite how difficult it was to get her arms around his broad body.

Lance still had them on occasion, not to the degree when it first started, but he managed it now and didn’t wake the house. It worked out for him too since most of the jobs he worked were open at dark anyway, so he gathered what little sleep his mind gave him and went to work at the start of a nightmare.

He was getting back from work this morning, knuckles stinging as the adrenaline exited out his body. With the shield down, it brought the memory to his nerves of the fists and kicks he’d endured to his chest and face. Sunlight winked down from the clouds. Children walked down the streets with book bags that once were a means of storage on the road but actually had books in them for learning.

Manny rushed at him from one of the streets, coming out of school.

Gabby had a little boy, Manny, who took after her with his brown skin and blue eyes and magnetic smile, although it was easy for some to misplace him as Mexican or African American

The dad tried to stick around. Wanted to give Gabby and Manny a house in the city and legal citizenship but passes weren’t cheap for anyone not deep in the pockets of the rich. So he took shit jobs; jobs that put him outside the city and outside the slum surrounding Chi-Town and for a man who lived most of his life in establishments and slums it was a dangerous career choice.

One trip out and he never came back.

 Lance went looking even though Gabby insisted and begged him not to risk it but he knew it ate her up not knowing, as shitty and cruel as the fact was it felt better to know. To see the corpse. Or to see them shuffling and sniffing the air like starved mutts.

Found him eventually and he saw bits of Manny in his face— the shape of his mouth, and the coarse nature of his black curls— and pointed the barrel to his head as the scent jacked him high and hungry. Zombies got psyched up around non-zombies. Managed a raged filled stride before the bullet dropped him to the floor.

Lance searched his body for something to give Gabby and dug up a few caps and a trinket Gabby had given him in some semblance of a ring.

Blood pooled out the tunnel in his head.

Lance looked at his face as the pool expanded. “Don’t worry about Manny or Gabby, man.”

Manny slammed into his shins like a battering ram. Lance hefted the little guy up and ruffled his puffy black hair, walking them both home.

Manny nestled his head on his clavicle.  “What happened?” He pointed to the gashed caked with dried blood and the bruises nursing purple and black on his cheekbone.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle, little man. How was school? Did you listen to your teach?”

“Kinda. It’s boring.”

“A bit but you gotta learn to read and write bud. One day it’s gonna be like the old world and you don’t want to be that dope who didn’t get his education, right?”

“Okay. I’ll listen.”

Outside the house, he set him down and played with his curls. “Wanna try reading some books to me later?”

“You’ll help if I get stuck, right?” Manny asked, self-conscious of the task.

He nodded. “Sure.”

Manny raced to Gabby when she opened the door, clinging to her leg like a leech, “Can I go out with my friends for a bit?”

“Okay,” she said. Then reminded Manny firmly, “But stay away from the fence.”

“Yes, mom,” he groaned as if zombies at the fence moaning and snarling to rip his face off was old, dry news.

 Benefits of living in the slums, Lance figured. If the situation was different and they were on the road Manny wouldn’t be so thoughtless, but it was refreshing to see someone grow up without that instilled fear. Maybe that was how the old world was, a place of carelessness and freedom.

“Okay, I love you! Bye.” Manny blitzed outside with the eagerness of his youth after he dumped his book bag in the foyer.

Lance laughed at the kid screaming to his group of friends waiting down the block, “She said yes!”

He went inside and shut the front door, slumping into the love seat. “Fuck.”

“You know Manny’s gonna figure out why you come back with bruises and blood on your face, Lance. He won’t be a kid forever. And you won’t be that young either.”

“Ugh. You sound like mom.”

“Someone talking shit?” his mother crept on him while he laid down on the sofa with his eyes shut.

He jolted up, “Oh shit.”

His mother smoothed her soft wrinkled hands kindly over the bruises. “Looks like someone tried fixing your face.”

“Ha, ha.” He fished out a sack of caps and handed to his mom. “Here. Put aside twenty for the passes. Use the rest for food.”

“You need to stop fighting and get a safer job already.”

Someone knocked on the door and Gabby rose, shifting her eyes over to Lance in answer.  He shrugged and gestured to her to check through the peephole.

“It’s some guy,” she mouthed.

Another knock pounded the door.

Lance clicked the safety off his Sig Saucer P226 and motioned for her and his mother to take point behind him. He ripped the door opened, collared the guy with his hand, and pressed the black muzzle to his temple.

“Who the fuck are you and why are you at my god damn place?” He asked.

“Hey, hey,” the guy said. Tall, lanky, with zero muscle mass and stringy blonde hair and a scratchy beard. Clothes cleaned and dirt free. Got that sleazy face which spelled trouble and dirty sex; pretty good looking if you were into the type.

  He smiled with a roguish charm that probably worked well on chicks and easy guys. “Thought you were a friendly dude. Lance, right?”

Lance tightened his grip, brown fingers squeezing harsh on the guy’s windpipe. The ache and pain from his late-night brawl dissipated instantly when confronted with a threat.  “Funny, that’s my name. Not yours. So I’ll ask who are you and why are you at my place again.”

“Name’s Rolo,” the guy wheezed. He wisely let his arms stay at his side the whole time as Lance pinned him.

Lance smiled. But it had no damn charm to make people sweet and easy. It had savagery in it like a mean dog. “Sup, Rolo. I’m Lance and I don’t like guests.”

“I’m not as a guest per se.” Lance felt Rolo’s throat constricted under his palm as he struggled for a slow breath. “I’m here with an opportunity that I would like to talk with you. In private. And without the gun.”

“You wanna talk, then I bring my gun.”

“That’s cool, man. Just try not pointing it at me.”

“As long as you don’t give me a reason. I’ll be back, ladies. Save me some food, yeah?”

Gabby whispered to him, glancing unpleasantly at Rolo. She motioned with her eyes to the brand of the Garrison cartel on the back  Rolo’s hand. “He’s Garrison, Lance. You can’t go with him.”

The Garrisons were Chi-Town cartel, one of several warring in the new age for drugs and territory. Not particularly high on the food chain when it came to drug operation but they did well enough to pay off miltary to look away and to influence the pockets of government officials. The real top dogs were the White Alteans and the Galras

Lance recognized the brand but Rolo wasn’t on his home turf within Chi-Town where his weight meant something. He was in the slums; Lance’s turf.

“I don’t mean to jump in, I get you all is fam, but what I have to say is something you wanna hear, Lance.”

“We talk where I want.” Maybe Rolo wanted simply to chat, though Lance couldn’t honestly say he knew many gangsters that liked talking— more capping people, damaging their property or their face, or hitting a blunt. Talking ranked low.

He wouldn’t be lead to some private spot so his guys could jump him on the dime.

“Cool, cool. Now the gun, please.”

Lance uncollared him and slowly lowered his gun. Didn’t want Rolo getting any funny ideas like reaching for his piece.

“Don’t mess with me,” he warned, not in the mood for guests and least of all a mutt of Iverson’s sitting on his porch. “If you know who I am then you’ll know I don’t like people messing around.”

“Like I said, this ain’t that, brother.”

“Alright. Gabby, bring in Manny too, please.”

He wasn’t too worried about the girls and Manny. He taught him pressure points to disable a guy long enough to escape and Gabby became an excellent marksmen under his mentorship; anything at a distance and she excelled but guns with a short range were an issue for because it meant getting close. And his mother was the one to teach Lance how steady the barrel of a pump-action shotgun without it knocking him on his ass.

“Okay.”

“Thanks. Later.”

 

 

[x]

 

 

 

Lance brought him to the isolated spot by the fence. The chain rattled as zombies bodily slammed into the wall of metal.

“So what do you want?”

“Straight to it, huh.”

He shrugged. “I got out of work. You’re cutting into my time with my family so yeah, get to it.”

Rolo chuckled. “Aren’t you supposed to be a funny guy?”

“I don’t know who you’re talkin’ to but the people that piss me off don’t think I’m very funny. You might be one of dem soon.”

He raised his hands. “I get it. I get it. You’re on edge. I’m not the bad guy.”

“Everyone’s done something.”

“Yeah, like you. You kill anyone recently?”

Lance stiffened. “No,” he lied.

“Sure, maybe I can help he was Garrison. Short, dark skin, Cuban, had a long scar on his face. Name was Hector. Think he was trying to get under your sister’s skirt.”

Lance stood silent. His expression spoke volumes, furious and jagged looking like a chainsaw.

Rolo noticed, shifted back with a forced smile of nonchalance. “Whoa. Easy.”

Hands clawed at the fence. Zombies with small enough arms squeezed through the gaps in the fence and closed their hands repeatedly on air. Lance thought up four different ways to erase Rolo in the measure of a second. Regardless of who snitched or how he’d acquired the information, Rolo knew with certainty.

Lance rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “I’m goin’ to tell you something about your boy, Hector. He hit up my sister and she declined very respectfully. Hector, the dumb piece of shit, didn’t hear her too well so he came again. And again. Last time he was at my place, piss drunk.”

 He said. “So I told him real nice, ‘come by my place again and I’ll shoot you’.”

“So you capped him?” Rolo asked.

He waited in silence and let the truth of it speak through his eyes and his body language. “Well, he did come back. Almost like he shot himself. ”

“He was one of us.”

“Good for you.” Lance dropped an arm to the side. A knife in his boot and a gun at the small of his back.  “If you’re going to jump me, it would’ve been smarter not to give me a heads-up.”

“Most cases that’s how it would turn out. I lure you out by threatening your fam and then me and my boys would pop you somewhere far and quiet. And toss you to these guys.” He tapped the fence with the tip of his shoe. “That’s why you wanted to talk here, right, so if you didn’t like me you could get rid of me easy.”

“I’m going to hurt your feelings and say yea, that was an option. So is it one?”

“No. You did us a solid. Hector was ripping some product and making money on the down low. And that’s one big of a no, no.”

“So if you’re not here to whack me, then what?”

“I did some digging around about you and let my boss know. We like guys like you. Guys that are the bite. You not only get shit done but you’re fucking good at it. You’re wasting time fighting. We can pay you better.”

“Pass. I don’t like clubs.”

“Do you hear yourself, this is a chance you shouldn’t waste. We don’t just let people into our ranks. Not the like the level we’re offering you.”

“No. This is you wanting a _sicario_ , a dog on a leash to bite on command.”

“We’re not the military, Lance. We’ll pay you well.”

“As long as I shoot whoever you want.”

“Sometimes. Other times, we want you scaring people not to fuck with us.”

“I’m not about that.”

“But you’re about your family, right? You joined the military for them. You’re going into underground fights for citizens passes. We can get you that.”

“And let me guess, all I gotta do is pay you guys off. Which citizenship is heavy for one person but four, well, I’ll be in debt for a long time. And I can’t forget about interest or any additional charges you’ll add on the way.”

“I can’t speak on that front, my man.”

“Yea, you’re just the pitch man, right,” he sneered.

“Maybe, it is a pitch but these fences ain’t gonna last for long, you gonna be there when it comes down? You gonna protect all three from infected? Think about your family. You join and we’ll get them in the next day.”

“No one can do that.”

“Iverson can. Hell, we can hook you with a place too. Just gotta say yes.”

“And do whatever you guys say.”

“Is it popping someone that’s rubbing you wrong?”

“Hey now, we datin’ or something? I don’t remember sucking your dick so don’t pry about my personal shit .”

“Aye man, I’ll back off. No problem but I think this is something you should think about seriously before you turn it down. Take the day and lemme know.”

 

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

“So what did he want? Was he asking about Hector?” Gabby asked as Lance walked through the door.

“They know.”

“Shit,” she gasped. “Do—do we need to run? Are they going to whack you?”

“No. Actually, they want me to join.”

“What do you mean?”

“They want me killing people for them or roughing people up. Either way, they want me in.”

“Oh, you told him no right…Are you seriously thinking about making ties in the cartel?” She accused. “ _Dumbass, you don’t get out ever. That’s how they are_.”

Lance glanced around the house, listening for prying ears but his mother was in a deep sleep and Manny busy with school work. “ _Keep it down,_ ” he ordered in Spanish.

Which bad, bad move, man.

Gabby seethed. “Don’t order me around. I’m not one of your fuckin’ soldiers. I’m not a child anymore, Lance, you can’t make these choices by yourself when it concerns the family. We talk about it.”

“I’ve always taken care of this family.”

“That’s the point. You.” She pointed, furious. “It always what you say. It always you taking the burden. I can help, Lance.”

“No.”

Gabby tossed her arms up and slapped them back down on the pants of her nurse uniform, a pair of faded and rapidly eroding pink scrubs. The thing wasn’t even the right size for her petite body, the sleeves ended to the middle of her forearm and she kept the pants up by the tying the string of fabric at the waist but it still sagged on her hips.

She started washing the dishes angrily, letting the glassware drop to the bottom of the sink.

“I don’t want your hands in the things I do,” he said after she shut off the water.

Gabby dried her hands on her shirt. “Why, cause you’re the man and I’m a woman,” she commented snidely, feeling so furious beyond herself and therefore looking for the thinnest jab to hurt Lance back.

Lance refrained from punching his fist on the table. He hated bringing that part of himself here. Hated showing his family he was as capable and as callous as the guys in the cartel.

He sucked it in, pounded it down until it skimmed the surface of his skin like a fish in a pond. Circling, Brimming. In view. “Jesus. I want you to have a clean life.”

“No one has that, Lance. Not me. Not Manny. God damn zambos are just a fence away from us,” she argued. “We can’t live like the old world because it’s dead.”

“Do you remember when we were living on the streets during the winter and you got sick?”

“Don’t change the subject,” she snapped, temperament violate.

“Do you remember?” He repeated.

“I…Vaguely. What’s your point?”

He ran his hand over the veins of the wood grain and started. “You got the flu. Which I know you’re thinking isn’t too big of a deal but you were young and we had no herbs by that time. Plus with the winter, everything was dead. So we had two choices, scavenge medicine or go to a settlement and hope you made the journey to it.”

Gabby waited for him to finish. “The nearest settlement was about a few days drive. We didn’t know if the roads were clear or not. If anyone would try to attack us. So we decided we would scavenge the area. I went. Mom was better with you than I was.”

Lance stood quiet for a beat. The words felt like a rope around his neck.

“When I got to town, there wasn’t shit. Picked clean. I went through every inch looking and looking. I wouldn’t come back unless I got something. Anything. Then I ran into this couple, guy and a chick. They had a lot of supplies on them. I asked if they had any medicine which they did. They wanted something in return.”

“What?”

Lance’s mouth morphed into something awful. Not a frown or a grimace. Just bitter. Sour and rotten like food in a trash bin. “They wanted guns.”

“Oh.”

“All they had were really dull blades and shit. So for the medicine, I had to give up my weapon… “ Lance searched for the right words, started, stopped himself and started again. “Which I…the only thing I was ever good at was killing. It was how I protected you guys. It was part of our survival. We only had the one hunting rifle and my pistol.”

Gabby asked cautiously. And that was the fucking thing right, _cautious_ , his own sister watched him with something he never thought to be on the receiving end of. “So what did you do?”

“I…I shot them. Both.”

Gabby clapped both hands over her mouth. She didn’t make a single sound. No cry. No gasp of betrayal. No fury.

“I took only a little bit of their supplies and the medicine and got out. I couldn’t…I felt so fucking awful taking their stuff,” he confessed. “I wished they had threatened me or something, but they were willing to trade. But I couldn’t give up my means of survival and I couldn’t let you die.”

“Lance,” she whimpered, overwhelmed with emotions.

Whether the tears were for the couple he’d killed or his ugly guilt washing down his face, he didn’t know. Maybe they were tears for the Lance she thought he was.

His words slurred together, speech sporadic with his anxious energy. “I dunno how many zambos I have killed.” He massaged his temples. “So god damn many, enough to label me a mass murderer but zambos aren’t people. But them, they were and I stopped their lives so we could have a chance.”

“I’m…”

You get it, now?

No one got this far without some tumor of guilt or shame festering in their heart.

“That’s why I make the choices for you, Gabby. I can do it. I can live with it….” He danced his fingers over the tabletop. Couldn’t even dare to look at her after it. He had never told anyone for fear that they would look at him as a murder. “If I join them, I can get citizenship for all of us. We can live in inside a city for once. You wouldn’t have to worry about Manny playing outside.”

“No. I would have to worry about you.”

“You don’t support this. But I’m not letting any of us live here.”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

The guard shifted his assault shift to his shoulder when Lance rounded the alley and walked down the narrow pathway. Two men were stationed at the front of the warehouse while a sniper manned the roof with a foldable plastic chair and a tripod. Someone duck tapped a bright umbrella to the seat so the sun wouldn’t beat down on the sentry.

Lance showed both hands and slowed his gait.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Lance. I was invited. Sort of.”

“I don’t know no Lance,” the other guard said, distrusting. “You’re not a junkie. You’re not rich. You got a nice face, so the fuck are you here with the men, boy?”

Lance smiled. “I think you’re friend just said I’m too pretty for a place like this, how sweet .I thought gangstas were all assholes too.”

“Fuckin’ shoot him in the nuts.”

“You go for my balls and I’ll make this very personal. Look, one of your boys talked to me. I’m here to talk back to him.”

“Which guy?”

“Rolo.”

The two guards looked to one another then laughed, tsking, with the choice made in their minds that Lance wasn’t much to concern themselves with. “Aye, Rolo is pickin’ up ass.”

“Listen if he ain’t coming back, he ain’t interested,” the other advised Lance.

They started to snicker at their humor.

Lance liked jokes. He made plenty to make his days a little sunnier but even he had a limit.

Faster than the drop of a pin but with the lazy ease of routine and training, Lance whipped out two pistols and aimed each barrel to each chucklehead. Like fish in a barrel. They sputtered, their hands dumbly reaching for their piece because they were too caught up laughing at Lance. The sniper straightened and lined a red dot in the center of Lance’s head.

Lance grinned, sharp and far, far away from the word comical. “Do I look like a joke to you? You bring me to Rolo or I’ll start making graves for your whole crew.”

Now that right there—

Said a whole hell lot about a person, a hell lot.

About character.

About their guts.

Walking into a hornet’s nest like it was the first day of a carnival with two Desert Eagles and a serrated knife in the boot.

Dumb ass choice, though, one mother of a stupid choice to make but Lance wouldn’t go very far and say he was a man of grand intellect.  These days, you wanted to be smart around a gun more than the books since there was no room for aspirations in the zombie age. But he was one thing, a damn _god_ behind a barrel.

Damn fluid with it.

Elegant but relaxed in his actions cause he had the _time_ and the experience and the stress conditioning him to be nothing but the best; anything less and he would be dead.

So he was nothing less.

Planned the time to shoot the two guards at the front, dive out of the sniper’s crosshair, and roll behind cover. The narrow channel which Lance entered could be his advantage as they funneled in a nice neat line.

Lance waited for their move, the minuscule twitch of the finger.

The sniper ordered, “Let him through.”

“The hell,” one of the guards protested. “We gonna let a guy like him in, Nyma?”

The sniper set down the high-powered rifle and leaned over the edge of the roof, pushing back a pair of pink shades, gold hair haloed her face.

 “Dad’s expecting him,” she said with a tone of arrogance Lance cataloged to wealthy people. “Be with you in a minute, handsome.”

 

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

 

Once the guards patted him down and confiscated his weapons, they cleared him through. The sniper from the roof was leaning against the wall when he walked inside.

“Nyma, was it?” Lance asked, offering his hand.

She shook it. Nyma was dolled up even in tactical gear. Golden hair silky and healthy as it cascaded over her shoulders and back. Skin clearly washed regularly. Lips painted cotton pink, so odd and out of place among the black and silver guns and brass bullets. She looked out of place. A fragment from an another time. Untouched by the outside world in every aspect. Posh and polished in a way the common people never knew.

No fear of zombies.

No fear of being poor and living in the streets or the slums.

Made sense, girl had the cleanest of silver spoons out there in her mouth since day one.

 “Yup.” She released his hand, fingers whispering over his like a ghost of desire.  “You’re Lance. Heard your name a few times but no one said anything about your face.”

“You make it seem like it’s a bad thing,” he said.

“It’s not, trust me,” she flirted, smile way too sensual and womanly to be sweet. She knew guy’s hearts and desires that much was evident by her body language and the deliberate hint of smoke in her voice.

Like Lance did up in the front, showcasing his expert skill with a gun, Nyma was doing the same. Showcasing her skills. Putting the proverbial bullet through Lance.

He coughed, awkward with her extremely apparent attraction especially in a place with this. “Did I hear you right up there, about you being the boss’s daughter?”

“Yea.”

“Weird to see you working security.”

“Well I begged daddy to let me play with the boys. So I play,” she smirked, lips a dagger to cut himself on. “Do little jobs here and there. Probably child's play compared to your work.”

“Lance,” Rolo greeted, a wedge of a smile beamed wide on his face as he strolled down a set of stairs. “I heard you gave the guys one of hell of a scare.”

“I was polite. At first,” he said. “You know they said something about shooting my balls. I had to defend myself.”

Rolo laughed. “See, I knew you were a funny guy. You got that look. But don’t worry about those guys, they won’t cause you much trouble now.”  He slung an arm around Lance which he deflected with a slap.

The room hushed.

Men slowed their activities, waiting, their fingers inching to the trigger.

Lance realized why—

His body slipped back to the soldier, the cut throat, the killer, the machine— a fist made and a hand knotted in Rolo’s shirt.

Excitement curled like a fat cat on Nyma’s face at his reaction.

Rolo picked up on the error and told the room to lay down their weapons.  “Hey, easy. I meant no harm.”

He blinked at his hands and let go. “I don’t like being touched. Nothing personal.”

“My bad,” Rolo backed up immediately. “You’re safe here. No one is touching a hair on your head. My word, man. I give it to you.”

Lance studied him. “I could be here to say no. Did you think of that?”

“If that were true, then you wouldn’t have come all this way, right? No point making an enemy by coming in here,” he said. “You still get to walk out no matter what.”

They took his weapons, basically leaving him defenseless, and asked him to trust them. Not likely; Lance said, unconvinced. “I’ll try to believe that.”

“Iverson’s waiting.” To Nyma, Rolo said. “Run along, princess. I got him.” He hovered his hand over Lance’s arm, careful to respect his boundaries or to indulge the ploy of nice guy.

“Excuse me.” Her nostrils flared. “You can’t order me around. I go where I want.”

“This is business, Nyma.” Rolo said, standing close to him. “Lance is here for a contract. Not a plaything.”

“Fuck you, Rolo.” She stormed off, snapping off on a few grunts who made the grave error of bumping into her.

“Sorry about her. She’s…Well she’s the daughter of the patron so you can understand her…”

“She’s a spoiled bitch. Say it, you’re not offending me.”

“Yea but that will offend Iverson and her so let’s save it for just us. Let’s not keep the boss waiting.”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

Rolo warned them before knocking on the double oak doors. “Not to be that guy but…” he motioned, zipping up his mouth with an invisible zipper. “Keep it tight.”

He cracked a fraction of a grin. “You mean don’t be a smart-ass to your big bad boss or I’ll be sleeping with the zambos.”

“It would be a shame for you to get all chewed up,” he joked.

“I’ll watch it.”

He knocked. “Yo, Iverson, it’s me and the new guy.”

A guard opened from the other side and shut it behind them. A smoking cigar whipped up clouds in a dish and set a fog in the room. Iverson sat in an old brown leather chair with his legs kicked up on the table. A glass of amber whiskey dangled loose in one of his hands. A polished Revolver laid on the table in wooden box lined top and bottom with soft fabric. Light glared off his bald head. A trimmed beard shadowed his square jaw. Years creased his eyes and mouth.

Good humor warmed his face until he saw Lance. He removed his legs. “You’re the guy who popped my guy?”

“You’re guy wasn’t a great listener.”

“True, but he was ours to punish.”

“I thought I was here for a job. Not to bullshit about the past.”

Rolo paled, stared with panic between Lance and Iverson.

Iverson broke the tension with a raspy, thunderous laugh. “That’s what I like in a guy. Balls.”

“Me too.”

“Don’t get too cute, Lance,” Iverson pointed. “Have a seat, please.” He motioned to his guards to bring two chairs for him and Rolo. “The fuck you waiting for. Get him a drink.”

“I’m okay,” Lance declined.

“Take it. You’ll need it. Trust me.”

Lance thanked the guard and sipped lightly. “Good shit.”

“Better than that fucking moonshine piss y’all slummers be drinking. That is only the start, Lance. Work here and it’s a buffet. Women. Men. Money. Blow. Guns. Hot showers.”

“I want citizenship for my family. A good place near a school for my nephew,” he said. “I don’t give a shit about anything less.”

“Uh, an honest man. I can respect that. Rolo here recommended you. Well after we found out Hector ripped us and there was no need to cut off your head.”

“That’s good or I would’ve killed more of your boys.”

Iverson smirked. “Military boy, right? I heard they made you lot suicidal as fuck.”

“The cartel’s not much compared to the horde.”

“Infected bite. But us,” Iverson hammered his fist on his chest. “We hurt you where it matters.”

“If you’re worried about me sampling your product then don’t, it’s not my thing.”

 “Good, because I don’t tolerate people trying to make extra money with my product.”

“Can you get me citizenship or not?”

“Sure.” He nodded, picked up his fat cigar and tapped the rim of the bowl to ash it off.

“Like that?” Lance asked; too easy. Iverson made it sound so easy.

Easy meant there was a hook attached to the bait.

Iverson struck a match and put the fire to the cigar, sucking on it, it glowed a bright amber. He popped off it, breathing out a wave of smoke to the ceiling. “I have good connections. I’ll get you it but you gotta earn it. Prove you’re one of us.”

“You know I’m good with a gun.”

“Yea, I do.” He puffed on his cigar. “You can pop guys but you did Hector due to the fact he was crossing you. It was a slight on your honor. The guys you’re going to hurt for me won’t be your enemy, they’ll be mine and by that logic they are yours. A person is different from an infected. Infected don’t beg or cry.”

“You got someone in mind then show me.”

“Not even an ounce of hesitation,” Iverson praised, standing up. “Let’s go.”

Lance swept his eyes to Rolo.

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

Lance’s commitment sat in a second warehouse— blindfolded, gagged and chained like a mutt. Piss, shit, and blood soured the air. Dark stains marked the cold concrete floor. Chains swayed from metal beams. On a table pushed to one of the walls was a gallery of tools for persuasion, some fresh from use. The other was being currently used, body on the slab.

Iverson gagged upon entering, waving a hand in the air to wipe away the stench, his escort of muscle hardly registered the smell of the place.

Lance breathed through his mouth.

Rolo coughed into the crook of his arm.

Iverson snapped his fingers at two men working around the room with hard faces and red hands. “Trevor— what the hell. You two need to clean this place up. It smells.”

The man named Trevor, who palmed a cleaver and a pair of black gloves, paused mid-stroke from hacking off a leg. He swung the cleaver wildly like an extension of his arm. Had the appropriate look for the job of human disposal with his charred black eyes, bushy eyebrows and beard, a hammer of a face, and big hands “The fuck, Iverson. They keep pissing themselves, what am I to do about that? I got bodies to cut and move off the city.”

“Wash it off. This isn’t the fucking slums.”

“Make the boys do it. I got work.” Trevor cocked his head and pointed at Lance with the cleaver. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Lance. New guy.”

“Whoopie fucking do. Welcome to the club,” he mocked, then got back to it with a melody on his lips.

 He turned to Lance. “Trevor here works the guys. Screw up and he’ll be chomping you up for the zambos.”

“Great.”

“What do you think?” Iverson motioned to his real estate of chains, wall, and splashes of blood.

He looked around the room and ignored all the signs of torture, then shrugged. “Think it would be cleaner since you have all this money.”

An edge steamrolled the humor in his voice. “I wonder how long that tough guy act will last.”

“Keep wondering.”

“I won’t. Kill him. Now.”

The guy sobbed into the gagged, shaking his head vehemently.

Lance looked at him for a short second, knowing Iverson’s gaze was gauging his reaction. “Who is he?”

“First, don’t ask me questions. It’s not your place,” he said. “Second, who gives a fuck about this guy. Maybe he’s an asshole who didn’t pay what he owes. Maybe he’s a nobody. Point is, he is a dead man. Make him one.”

Lance worked out his fury through his jaw, biting his teeth harsh to the flesh inside his mouth.

Iverson tipped his drink back, a sick smile on his brown face from wiring out a genuine emotion out of him.

Lance raised his chin and opened his palm. “Give me a gun.”

Iverson polished off his drink. “Nah. I see what you're about, Lance. A gun’s too easy for you. Too quick.” He walked to the table, scanning the tools, then picked one that met his standards. “Now blades, they require skill so to speak. The edge has to be sharp or you won’t cut deep and the person suffers more for it. I want his head gone.”

Iverson walked back with a machete in hand, fingers loose on it. “Cut it off.” He whistled. “Rolo. Put this prick on his knees.”

“Yea, sir.” Rolo nodded. Moved behind the chair and unknotted the rope binding his legs to the chair and lacing up his wrist. The guy flopped forward, screaming, and started to belly crawl on the floor.

“Is it sharp?” Lance asked, hearing all of this. Seeing the guy out of the corner of his eye. Knowing Iverson wanted a response not measured and weighed by him. He broke guys with a single look his whole career and now came Lance, a guy who whacked out of his guys without his knowledge and walked in here with guns and an attitude none of his men would dare to flaunt, so Iverson had plenty to prove. To his own people. To Lance, especially.

“Let’s hope so or else he’s going to be in a lot of pain.”

Lance grabbed the machete, handle first, and strummed his thumb across the blade. A decent sharpness. Heavily used though with a dull luster on the silver.

Rolo said to the guy when he tried to curl into fetal, straightening him out so the line of his neck was exposed, “Stay still or he’ll miss.”

Guy trembled.

Then a wetness pooled.

Lance lined the machete once in a mock strike, slowing his stroke at the end.

Iverson observed. “You want your family inside, then you bring me his head.”

Just another tally, right, Lance?

You already have a graveyard in you, so why care now?

Make another hole in the dirt.

Do it.

Do it.

For Gabby, Manny, mom.

They’re worth more, right?

Each time it came down to them or someone else, you chose them.

Every shit thing you did to another person was in their honor.

This was for family.

This was for survival.

Right?

Lance took the machete to the guy’s neck and—

The sound.

_Meaty._

_Fleshy._

_A wet squish._

It wasn’t leaving him anytime soon. Sank down into his pores, to the layer underneath, to the marrow, all the way in search of his soul.

He hit bone. Chipped it. Saw the hairline thin crack as he wiggled the blade free.

The guy fell, choking on the gag because blood was pouring out his mouth.

Rolo yanked him up and undid it.

“Please,” he slurred, voice wet with saliva and blood drooling out his mouth.

Iverson snorted, “Guess it wasn’t sharp after all.”

Lance glared, fury in his skin like the bubbles popping on the surface of boiling water.

“You going to let him suffer? Finish the job.”

Lance brought it down again and it wasn’t cutting through.

He hacked again.

Again.

Hitting bone.

Then muscle.

Then tendons.

Until the head lopped off and rolled away.

Trevor whistled, impressed. “Damn, son. You made one hell of a mess.”

Iverson clapped him on the back, shaking him, while Lance stared numbly to the growing lake of blood. Saw some of it sprayed his hands. Felt some track down his face. “Now, you’re one of us. There’s just one more step.”

Rolo spoke up, “Let him wash up, yea?”

“No. Trevor, time to collar up our boy.”

He heard the catch of a blowtorch, orange and yellow tongues licked the blackened metal. Hands moved him without permission into the chair. Lance shot forward and punched out of the owners to those hands before more roped him back down. He bucked out but they had him pinned good.

Trevor carried the glowing rod. “Don’t be getting excited or I’m going to mess up. Where at, boss?”

Iverson fisted his hair and cranked his head to the right. “Neck.”

“You piece of—“

Trevor framed a hand on his neck. “It’ll be fast. Calm down.”

The metal smoked, flushing his skin hot as it drew near.

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

 

Lance stumbled in the dark. He found the couch and dropped into it.

Gabby walked into the front of the house with a flashlight and a handgun, pointing the beam of light around until it streamed on Lance’s back. He quivered, not saying a word. A lonely string on a guitar.

“Lance?” She put the gun down and squatted by his knees. “What happened? Look at me, Lance.”

He lifted his head, eyes blue-er with unshed tears.

“What happened?” She asked again. Then she noticed a rancid stench of burnt skin and followed the smell to the brand on his neck, blisteringly red and shiny. “I told you…I fuckin’ told you not to.”

“I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Caps is directly pulled from the Fallout games which are post-apoca as well and they are basically bottle caps and used as currency.  
> 2\. Temp passes are as strict to get as citizenship and you have a list of rules to abide to such as curfew, what items you can bring in and out of the city, etc.  
> 3\. Lance's unit in the military were not part of the large operation that goes into clearing a whole city. He worked as a post-cleaner so his unit went in areas already established by the military and maintained it zombie-free. Clearing large cities especially ones the size of Chicago, New York, and California require years of planning and hundreds of troops.  
> 4\. New Cali, Old York, and Chi-Town are some of the largest of the re-established cities.   
> 5\. Sicario is Spanish for hitman.  
>  
> 
> tumblr: pro-derp


	3. I ain't going back and no I ain't coming back

“Citizenship,” Rolo said, offering Lance four passes into the city. “You’re not a slummer anymore.”

Lance placed them reverently inside the inner pocket of his jacket. “Thanks.”

“Look…” Rolo dragged a hand through his long hair. “What happened back there…that guy…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Lance said, fast as a bullet.

Yea, could they not?

His mind did plenty of talking.

Plenty of replays.

Shot by shot comparisons.

The fuck was there to discuss; how shitty he felt; the pain still searing on his skin plain as day, an actual tag of Iverson’s resentment and ownership; how maybe Lance should’ve tossed Rolo over the damn fence and leave him for zombie chow.

“Yea. I just…Don’t let it…” He struggled, words leaking out his mouth like a broken faucet.

“I don’t want to repeat myself.”

“Right. Sorry. Sorry. I just wanted to say it shouldn’t have gone down like that.”

“But it did.”

“Fuck. You want to make this hard for me. If you don’t want to talk, then let me get you a beer or something.”

“Sure.”

He didn’t like Rolo. Not much of him made the guy physically attractive to Lance— skinny and lean like a wire,  body moving like a slithering snake, grin easy to fabricate on the whim, but Lance liked being with himself less lately.

So why the fuck not?

 He couldn’t sleep much or move as smoothly with the brand still healing in the brightness of the day. Manny stared with the curiosity of a child and the question burned on his tongue but he didn’t ask it. Gabby said little afterward, conflicted because it was the right move— once everything got settled with Iverson, Manny would be safe—; upset because Lance did that and more to get them citizenship; hurting because he did it again and took the hit for the family so they wouldn’t hurt. His mom seemed to be the sole one to understand it, which made sense since it wasn’t too long that she had to make the tough calls.

Whatever got him out of his head and into somewhere brighter with clean edges.

Rolo took Lance to a fancy bar with actual booths with cushions, a clean bar top with the glossy finish, the titles flat and clean, and no boards on the windows. Normally, Lance had no time to enjoy the benefits of sneaking into the city district but he did now, feeling transported in this small bar.

Rolo led him to a booth. A waitress strolled back with a waist apron and a smile for customer satisfaction.  

“Rolo, good to have you. What will it be for today?” She asked with a chirp in her voice.

“I want the best you got. Best beer. Best burger. My friend just got his citizenship.”

The girl shyly glanced at Lance. “That’s great. You’re going to love living here. We got almost everything here.”

“Yea,” he swallowed. She looked…untouched by it all like Nyma, an alien to his mind and soul. “Thanks for having me.”

“How would you like your burger?”

“Uh, cooked?” He said,  regarding Rolo and the waitress with a note of confusion.

The smile on the gangster’s face was one of softness and sympathy. Like a person finding a malnourished pup too weary to trust the hand running on its spine without harm. “Oh. Man you’ve really been living on the outside. Medium done for him.”

The waitress smiled once more, biting her full lip, teeth a blinding white to her African skin.  “I’ll tell the cook. Should be about twenty minutes. I’ll get you fellas started on those beers.” She hopped off.

Rolo laughed to himself. “Man, already wooing everyone.”

“How?”

He vaguely gestured, the confidence he had pumping out the charm flat lining.  “I mean you’re a good looking guy.”

“Oh?”

“Sorry. It must be a different life outside.”

“Well, no shit,” Lance grinned to show him no harm was taken. “My mind is still out there sometimes. Did you grow up in the city?”

“Yea. A lot people here parent’s settled up quick when they re-established the cities. We’ll get people from the outside, slummers, but not people like you.”

“We don’t fit very well, I guess.”

The waitress shuffled back with two pints, the liquid an honest color of hazel and not the piss yellow of moonshine. Rolo thanked her on their behalves, seeing Lance in a state of confusion from the boy dodging zombies to the man in a city with real lights, real freedom, food seasoned and cooked and not eaten right off the marrow of an animal, the warm banter of people without the ingrained unease.

Lance ran his fingers over the cool glass, a mirror of himself in it only distorted and shimmered in gold. He drank, smiling, because it was awful but the good awful. Real beer. Real shit that the old world had and it sat in his hands.

“Could you tell me about it— whatever you’re willing to share,” Rolo asked tactfully. He chambered his words like one did with grenades, chunking off the explosive with a clear intent but ultimately weak to its landing zero.

“Why do you give a shit?” Lance blurted. Outside didn’t really care for acts of subtlety. “Not to be an asshole but I don’t get the whole point. You got what you wanted. So what the fuck?”

“Like I said you’re a good looking guy…” Rolo shrugged. “And Iverson wanted your skills. I could care less about that.”

“Well…taking a shit is a pain in the ass. You gotta dig a hole and everythin’.”

Rolo barked out a warm chuckle, then jutted a thumb lazily. “Those your dog tags?”

Lance slipped the chain under his shirt. Exposed suddenly, like Rolo could read his guilt and shame of it. “No,” he said, voice hardened again.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

Fuck, Lance, ease off the trigger, yea?

Iverson wasn’t straight but Rolo proved himself a decent guy so far and you don’t need more enemies.

“If you apologize one more time then I’m beatin’ your head in. Shut up and talk.”

“Were they a friend?”

Lance dropped his eyes to the foam on the glass as it slicked down, and remembered all of them then—in the Hummer with the windows down, in the middle of a mission and popping off zombies like people wrenching out weeds, the fire spray-painting their faces in shadows and yellow light, Coran loud and odd busting all their balls for fun.

He didn’t think he was allowed to remember them.

His heart ached, roped in wire and nails. “Like family, actually. If you live long enough, those people become your family.”

“What did you do in the military?”

“Uh. It changed sometimes but mainly, I cleared out sectors of zambos. Streets and shit. Sometimes they had us clean the area around cities if zambos started to add up. I was in a small unit.”

“You didn’t clear the cities?”

“Cities require large chunks of troops. That meant training, guns, and planning,” he said. “They’re not easy to win. It’s pure stupid luck that any of cities got cleaned. A lot of people died.”

“Thank you for your—“

Lance sliced the air, the beer making him a little looser in his mind. “God no. Don’t tell me that.”

“It’s a brave thing to join.”

“I wasn’t brave doing it.” Lance polished his drink, mouth filled with the bitter aftertaste.  “I was pretty stupid and damn good with a gun. I thought it would be a breeze for me.”

“Weren’t you ever…Don’t they scare you a bit?”

“…It scares me what they can do. What they did. Made the whole world dark…” Lance said. “That’s fuckin’ scary.”

“I think I would’ve shit myself.”

“Probably.”  Lance looked at Rolo.

He met his gaze and found a hint of mirth in the man’s eyes. “You asshole. You saying I don’t have what it takes?”

Lance shrugged not so innocently. “What, no.”

The waitress weaved between the tables with two steaming plates. She set them on the table. “Here you are, boys.”

Rolo scraped his plate over, inhaling deep with his nose to the food. “Smells divine, Dolores. Thanks, doll.”

Dolores directed a sweet one to Lance. “If you need anything, let me know.”

“Sure.”

“You don’t like girls?” Rolo asked, seeing Lance disinterested in Dolores when the waitress sauntered purposefully to the bar. A roll to her wide hips and long legs

“Girls. Guys. Either is fine. I like living more.”

“You’ll get that here, Lance. How’s your food?”

Lance chewed slowly, savoring the spices and uncharred texture. He gave a thumb up instead of interrupting the party in his mouth. This moment felt so dreamlike and tranquil from his life. As though he invaded into a wonderland not meant for his dirty hands.

“So what does Lance, the military man, do when he’s not kicking ass and winning hearts?”

He swallowed his food with a small laugh. “I don’t do any of that.”

“I have never met anyone that would walk into the home of the cartel like he was delivering letters. Oh and draw his gun, too.”

“I didn’t want you guys thinking I can get fucked. And to answer your question, I shoot.”

“No. Like what do you do for fun?”

“Shoot,” he said again. “Punch stupid people.”

“Like…something that doesn’t involve you killing shit.”

“Oh. I mean, I don’t do it often cause…of time. I play a little guitar. Sing a bit. I suck at the chords but words are easy.”

“There’s actually a store here with music. Kinda pricey but you can listen to whatever you want there. I could show you.”

“Wow. Trying for something, huh?”

“Maybe.”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

 

Iverson got on the horn to him through Rolo and he had no choice but to appear when summoned like a mutt to a whistle.

Narco boss sat on his ass in that brown leather chair, rolled a fat cigar between his fingers,  face dark looking like an oil spill on the street. When he grinned, Lance felt sticky and tacky on the inside. “Lance, how are you liking the city?”

Translation: how does the collar fit, bitch?

Lance said, “The fuck do you want?” Didn’t conceal the bite in his bark— fuck that, Iverson wanted his attack dog, right? Why else was he here?

“A hello would be nice, we’re a family now.”

He clenched his fists inside his pockets, anger like a hot brand in his hand, and found a blank spot on the wall and imagined vividly Iverson’s head knocking on it like a door knocker. “I hate repeatin’ myself. What do you want?”

“I have guy walking around like he’s alive when he should be…what’s the word, he should be alive just not walking very well, you get my drift?”

He paused his montage of Iverson’s head bumping to the wall to squint. “Thought you wanted people dead?” Lance asked. “Not disabled.”

“Can’t take the military out of the boy,” he mocked, the amber end of the cigar dulling in color from disuse.

“Look, I just want to be clear on everything.”

Fuck Iverson and his crew, but he would do what was expected of him because his whole family glowed head to toe from having a hot shower in years. Years. Looking actually red in the face. And no one needed to converse water or energy. In the slums where everything shut off and on with the hour. Water never ran warm.

It was good.

Lance wanted to keep it that way for them.

“He’s a client. A stupid client who thinks dope and girls come free. Dope doesn’t. He’s behind. Make him remember us.”

Make him remember fear, you mean.

If the guy dipped into dope or whatever, then he had the money so why worry about people with luxuries when the beating came to them? They lost no sleep over slummers or outsiders.

“Okay.”

“And be careful, he’s in the Gold district. People there will report a crime.”

“Lemme guess, I get caught then I’m fucked.”

“Yea. Rolo will show you how to get in and out. It’s on you whether you get out unseen.”

“Anything else?”

“Tell Shelby I send my regards.”

Lance saw himself out to find Rolo on the wall, leaning like an overstuffed alley cat.

“Going my way?” Rolo teased.

Lance scoffed and motioned to him to start walking along. Rolo fell in line, body moving like a thread in a running seam. “Eat a cock. So I’m assuming you’re giving me the run down?”

“Yea, I used to rough people. “ In a show of telling, Rolo fished out his hand and let Lance see the scars on the back of his hand as they moved in and out of beams of light. Where they crossed and intersected. Where the splits ran wide and deep. An invitation hung in the air, to touch and feel; Lance let it plummet to the ground where it belonged.

 “Now I sell products to people or people to us. Much better. I’m not that scary of a guy,” he continued, trotting down the stairs.

A whistled rung through the building. Lance looked for the source.

Nyma winked from the rafters with a sniper rifle slung on her shoulder. “Care for some company boys?”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

The Gold District rightfully earned its name, and not for the fact that anything about the community was painted in gold, but the fact their gold was in the eight feet tall brick wall and security checkpoints at the entrance manned by two military personnel. None of Lance’s underground work ever brought him near it and he had no bubbling curiosity to search for it himself.

“There’s a way in right?” He asked Rolo as they watched from a street corner.

“This isn’t New Cali, there’s a way,” he said, miming his fingers going under the wall.

“What’s at Cali?”

“Big money. Bigger walls,” Rolo said. “If you think Chi-Town is the life then you’re wrong. It’s Cali. They are the old world.”

Nyma smacked her lips. “I thought you guys were doing something fun.”

“You want excitement go play with zambos,” Lance told her.

“The hell’s a zambo…that’s what you guys call them. Christ.”

“Yea, you city humpers like your walls that us zambos killers died for. You’d be a damn lamb for them.”

“Not with this.” Nyma un-holstered her Glock, face filled with manufactured coolness and grit. 

Rolo yanked her arm down. “Don’t fucking flash your gun. Jesus.”

“What, they don’t care as long as we shoot on our side of the wall.”

“Do that and see that you don’t get killed,” he snapped. “And we’re not going through. We’re going under.”

“Sewers?” Lance asked.

“Yea.”

“Fuck.”

 

 

[x]

 

 

Water went up to the calf of his legs and soaked his boot and socks. Rolo led them by flashlight, directing Lance’s attention to visual markers to use when he came through on his own. They stopped by a gate laced with a heavy duty chain and a lock.

“Can you pick locks?” He asked, pulling out his tools to pop it.

“I was in the military. Zambos don’t carry locks.”

“I’ll leave this unlocked for you. No one comes down here anyway. Lot of people don’t know about the channels anyway.” The gate swung inward. Rolo hung the chain through the loops in the gate.  “You get in and out without a fuss and people will keep not caring.”

“Iverson gave me the talk.”

“I know but this tunnel is good for selling in the district and we want it to stay out of mind.”

Nyma groaned, “Fucking come on, I’m standing in piss and shit and god knows what else

Rolo led them to a ladder bolted to the walls of the sewers, half submerged in the murky waters and half colored with rust and moss. “Up here. There’s another one that will get you closer to the area but it’s smarter to move in and out in the less populated areas in case you are seen.”

He climbed up, peeked under the lid, and pushed it back. “Clear.”

Lance gesture for Nyma to go first. “A gentleman,” she purred, quirking her old world pink lips.

“No. I’m just paranoid.”

“Right, handsome.” She winked, then hooked her legs on the rung.

Lance waited for a beat, then went up next, sunlight hitting him in the face like a hammer after being deep in the dark for so long. He blinked until the sting subsided.

Rolo whistled, jerking his head. “I’ll show you where he is.”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

 

Lance took a week to study Shelby’s routine. The guy didn’t sleep alone at night, always bringing a willing girl or a rented one to his home every night. In the mornings, he kicked out his one nights as soon as possible and laid around his place until noon and started the process all over again.

Shelby walked a girl out in the morning, wearing a silk robe and silk boxers; and Lance walked himself in through the balcony. Shelby liked the breeze to drift into his house. Lance liked that about Shelby because he got in easy and waited in the kitchen behind the wall, munching on a piece of toast the man made for breakfast.

Lance wiped his hands when he heard the door close and footsteps double back to the kitchen.

Shelby passed through the threshold, blinded to Lance on the wall.

 Bad move.

Lance cupped the back of his head and slammed it down on the counter. Shelby’s head bounced off it, tumbling to the floor, as his body convulsed.

When some orientation came to the man, Lance picked him up and spread one of his arms out on the counter and whacked  it with a hammer. Shelby howled. Lance let him fall down and deal with the break.

Shelby curled, then inspected his arm to see half of it limp and unresponsive. A jut of bone poked the skin. Lance buttered a second slice of toast and chewed.

“Fuck! My fucking arm. “ He shouted with horror. “You dumb slummer trash, do you know who the fuck I am? I could have you killed, dumbass.”

“That’s rude,” Lance said, stuffing his mouth. “I have my citizenship right here. Maybe try that again. I’ll wait.”

“F-fu-fuck! What do you want?”

Lance opened one of his cabinets and the shelves were grossly over packed with food. Enough to live off for years. More than enough for a single guy. “Me? Nothing. But people I know they want something from you.”

“What?”

Lance found a bar of chocolate and pocketed it. “We’re going to play that game.” He squatted. “Fine, I’ll break something else.”

“Wait, wait.” Shelby screamed as Lance stretched out his leg.

Lance showed him the hammer, waggling the blunt head in front of his face. “You owe money to someone. Real asshole. Always smoking a cigar. Makes you wanna puke.  Any bells yet?”

“You’re Iverson’s man?”

“I’m on loan. Don’t lump me with him.”

“I’ll pay him! I swear.”

“That’s good to hear.” He nodded.  “I still have to beat the shit outta you. “

“Wait— ah, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Lance tapped his cheeks to focus the man’s attention. “Shelby. You’re not a bad guy. Just a lazy dog. I got nothing against you. But if the money doesn’t come, then I will. And I won’t break your arm and leg. I’ll pop you as you’re getting pussy. I’m not a guy to fuck with.”

“Okay.” Shelby’s jowls quivered. “Okay. I’ll pay. I’ll pay.”

“I ate your food. And I’m taking something with me for someone. You mind?”

“N-no. Take what you like. Have it all”

“I’m not greedy. But thanks. Take care.”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

“Keith!” Keith whirled around in time to see the zombie gunning for his back , head explode. Blood freckled his face.

Keith grunted, wrenching the blade of his katana from the zombie’s skull.

Shiro hopped into the pit.

“I had it under control,” Keith said.

Shiro inspected the blood and sighed in relief when he found it to be the zombie’s and not Keith’s.  “You need eyes everywhere. I can’t help you in a real fight.”

“I know.”

“You’re getting too worked up. You throw everything into each brawl. And that’s going to tire you out fast.”

“I get it.”

“Keith—“

“Lay off,” he snapped. “Look, I’m sorry. Just…I know, Shiro. I’m trying to get good like you.”

Shiro said, “I don’t want you to be good as me. I want you to be better, Keith. I got into the anger and it lost me my arm.”

Keith snapped his eyes to the metal arm in a show of guilt. It didn’t linger long. He dragged the back of his hand over the blood spatter.  “Yea.”

“The thing about zambos, Keith, is not to fight them like people. You’re strong as hell but it’s too much. You need to dole out that strength reasonably. Don’t be wild. Be in control.”

“I want to get over this part, Shiro. I want to fight.”

“Don’t rush your training. Here we can keep you safe but in the real thing, it’s only you. You die, we can’t do shit.”

“Alright.”

Shiro clapped his shoulder. “Let’s take ten. Get some meat on those bones. You’re too skinny.”

“I’m getting buff,” Keith argued and flexed in proof. Months of rigorous training and a spurt growth turned Keith from the skinny punk with long hair to the stocky punk with a crooked nose and long hair. Compared to Shiro, Keith still looked like a pup but a pup with some real teeth.

Shiro pinched the bulge. “Aw, look at that baby bicep. So cute. Now check this bad boy.” He rolled his sleeve back and tensed his arm, over doing the show in an effort to break Keith’s stoic face.

“Pidge, send out a zambo.”

Pidge hummed with consideration by the gate, batting the pulley side to side like a feline. “Maybe. What will you buy me?”

“Chocolate.”

Pidge yanked on the pulley, eager from the bribery. “Sweet. Bye Shiro.”

 

 

 

[x]

 

 

 

Iverson smirked around a cigar. “Shelby paid.”

“Bet that just tickles your balls, right,” Lance said, in a sour mood at the whistle to come back to person holding his leash.

Iverson opened a drawer, picked out a sack of caps and flung it across the desk. It clanked hard, caps brushing each other. “Here’s your take. For a job well done. See what happens when you play nice.”

Lance drew the tie, counted the caps. “Shouldn’t there be more?”

“Well a cut of it goes to me and the mother of a debt you owe for the passes and the house.”

“Of course.” He tied it and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. “Bet that amount will add up too.”

“Only if you’re good at your job, which Lance, you excel in.”

_Yea, I’m good at killing._

_I’m good at fucking up people._

_I know this shit, you don’t need to educate me on myself, asshole._

“Call when you have a job. I’m not a dog and I won’t play catch with you.”

 

 

[x]

 

Lance took Manny out. The little guy missed his friend back in the slums, missed his teachers, missed the broken windows, the bent signs on the corners, the rats moving in the bushes. Even with the upgrade of his own room, hot showers, a better education, books, and security; the kid still wanted back in the slums.

Lance swung the little hand in his to get Manny smiling. It took a few minutes but it came, bright and sweet.

“Why can’t we go back home?”

“This is home.”

“But I like our old home.”

“It was old and smelly.”

Manny considered that. “But it was ours.”

“Now we can make this one ours too. Maybe I can convince Gabby to let us have a dog. They have dogs here, not those feral ones.”

“I miss my friends.”

The sincerity there hurt. He squeezed his soft hand, the hand that didn’t know a handgun from an AK-47, butterfly knives to Bowie’s, how to make graves for loved ones. “I’m sorry, little man. But it’s better here, you’ll see.”

“I’ll try.”

Metal shrieked as kids swung back and forth on the swing set. Other kids giggled and took turns on the slides. Manny looked over at the laughter, wanting to join but afraid.

Lance played coy. “What’s this, a park? Those swings look cool as hell. It sucks that I’m too big for it though.” He sighed. “Man. I can’t have any fun.”

“You can push me on the swing. It’s kinda the same.”

“Oh really?”

“Yea. You won’t look like a dork if I’m on it.”

“You little punk.” Lance ruffled his bouncy hair.

Manny tugged. “Let’s go. Someone got off.”

“Okay, okay.” He laughed, following Manny’s lead on to the woodchips and hefted his butt on the swing. “Ready?”

Manny squirmed in excitement. “Yea.”

Lance drew the swing back and let it go, pushing off Manny’s back when the kid rounded back. Got him a reasonable but safe amount of height. His nephew squealed with unadulterated delight and all the blood on his hands, all the graves, all the people he would kill— it was worth it. Worth it for this piece of happiness and peace for a little boy in a world broken and teeming with flesh eating cannibals.

 

 

[x]

 

 

Weeks later, Lance got the call. The shop owner wasn’t paying his monthly protection fee, Lance was to rectify that and remind the guy why you paid your dues to the Garrison in Chi-Town.

Lance shouldered a metal baseball bat, walking slowly to the shop. His boots splashed in a puddle, ripples danced over the grainy mirror image of Lance. The sun poured over his head, the tip of his cap shading his eyes as the clouds parted.

Iverson’s order:

Break shit.

Break fingers.

Take whatever.

Don’t hurt the owner too much but hand him a good scare.

_Cool by me, I’m good at introducing a scare. Been living in one for a good chunk of my life._

_Lived it in Huston, watching my whole squad die by the hands and teeth of zombies._

When he opened the front door, a little bell triggered his arrival.

Ring, ring.

Ring, ring.

War dog on the hunt for blood.

 

 

Word passed quickly since the Shelby incident if you had Lance McClain strolling on your block, you better have the money or pray he left you with only a few shattered bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr: pro-derp

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The song Lance sings to Coran for maximum sadness, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu2pVPWGYMQ
> 
> 2\. You'll notice certain people will refer to the zombies as infected or zambos which a reflection of their status in the world. Many people from cities will call zombies infected while common people call them zambos. 
> 
> 3\. Zambo is an obvious bastardization of the word zombie. It was done to take away the power and fear in the word 'zombie'.
> 
> 4\. Cities are run and controlled by the military. Slums are communities organized on the outskirts of cities. Settlements are towns created and manned by regular people. Settlers will typically be self-sufficient and earn no benefit from the military, unlike slums which do.
> 
> 5\. Anyone can enlist in the military regardless of their station. Most do to earn citizenship which is a license to live in the city.
> 
> tumblr: pro-derp


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